#304 Chris Bayless - 30 Years Undercover Inside America's Most Violent Gangs

Chris Bayless is a former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Special Agent who spent more than three decades working some of the most dangerous undercover investigations in the United States. An original member of ATF’s Enhanced Undercover Program beginning in 2000, Bayless spent years infiltrating violent outlaw motorcycle gangs including the Outlaws, Grim Reapers, and organizations connected to the Hell’s Angels, helping build major federal RICO prosecutions against organized criminal enterprises. Raised in a suburb of Chicago by two school teachers, Bayless was influenced early by mentors in law enforcement who shaped his path toward public service. After attending Manchester University in Indiana, where he studied Environmental Studies and Criminal Justice, he joined the ATF in 1987 in the Chicago Field Division. Throughout his career, Bayless worked major federal operations targeting violent crime in cities such as St. Louis, Oakland, Phoenix, Cleveland, and Albuquerque. His undercover work placed him deep inside biker gangs and other criminal networks, requiring years of operating under assumed identities in high-risk environments. Beyond investigations, Bayless served in the ATF Peer Support Program, helping fellow agents process trauma following critical incidents, including the aftermath of Waco. After decades of operating in violent environments and living in constant hypervigilance, he was eventually diagnosed with PTSD near the end of his career. Today, Bayless teaches at the ATF Academy, helping train the next generation of agents while reflecting on lessons from his career about trauma, resilience, faith, and redemption. Outside of law enforcement, he spends time restoring WWII Army Willys Jeeps and navigating life after decades of undercover work. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Go to ⁠https://calderalab.com/SRS ⁠and use code SRS for 20% off your first order. Get 50% off your first order of Sundays for Dogs at ⁠https://sundaysfordogs.com/SRS50⁠ or use code SRS50 at checkout. Get 20% off Rho Nutrition’s longevity stack with code SRS at ⁠https://rhonutrition.com⁠ Live better longer with BUBS Naturals. Get 20% OFF on collagen, MCT creamers, and more with code SHAWN at ⁠https://bubsnaturals.com/srs⁠ If you’re serious about selling to the Department of War, go to ⁠https://SBIRAdvisors.com⁠ and mention Shawn Ryan for your first month free. 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

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  On October 2nd.

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  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

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  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

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  With great power comes great deniability.

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  I'm not the first then.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not admitted without parent.

• 0:30Speaker 03

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• 1:05Shawn Ryan?

  So I just spent about, I don't know, 12 hours digging through the internet about you, and you are a bad motherfucker. Holy shit. Whoa, dude. I don't, I don't think so, but, okay. Are you sure you had Chris Bayless? It wasn't some other guy with a different name? I'm pretty sure. Are you sure? But, uh, and the first ATF agents, agent I've ever had on the show. I hope I don't screw it up for the rest of the friggin' agency. Oh, man. But, um, I'm sure you'll get some bad reviews on talking to an ATF guy. Oh, I'm sure I will too, but. Who cares?

• 1:42Shawn Ryan?

  I get bad reviews all the time. There you go, right on. But I want to start off with a introduction, so, to prove my point here.

• 1:51Shawn Ryan?

  Chris Bayless, 30-year ATF special agent, spent the majority of your career undercover. Infiltrated the Hells Hinchman Motorcycle Club and was inside when they patched over to become the Hells Angels, planning the club's first plague in the Midwest. Your undercover intelligence helped build the federal RICO case that took down Mel Chancy and the Chicago Hells Angels leadership. Partners with Jay Dobbins, the agent who later infiltrated the Hells Angels in Arizona. Personally involved in more than 100 stash house sting operations across the country. Had partners shot and killed, continued to work for three decades.

• 2:30Shawn Ryan?

  Suspects planned to kill you on roughly half of your operations. One crew planned to poke holes in your stomach and to sink your body in a river. Got locked in a bar with a 6'9", 300-pound biker outlaw enforcer while you were wearing a wire. You fought your way out. Your stash house operations cut shootings in half in Oakland. Made 70 arrests in Phoenix. Became a public face of ATF's defense against entrapment and racial bias allegations from federal judges. And today, you're retired, outspoken, and ready to tell the story you couldn't tell for 30 years. Wow. And I had to dub that down. Yeah.

• 3:14Shawn Ryan?

  That's very nice. Sounds like a nice guy. Yeah, I don't know who that guy is, but you should have him on your show. But, uh, well, I got something I want to give you. Okay. So.

• 3:28Speaker 05

  Let me grab it here real quick.

• 3:36Shawn Ryan?

  Holy Nike. So, uh, I've always, well, never in a million years would I think I would be willingly, willingly giving an ATF agent a short-bell rifle and a suppressor. I love it.

• 3:56Speaker 05

  So, uh, I got some buddies over at SIG. One really good buddy, his name's Jason, he's the VP of Marketing over there. That is a fantastic platform, man. Found out you were coming on and surprised to me, wants to give an ATF agent a short barrel rifle and a suppressor, so. There you have it. Are you kidding me? Have you, have you, uh, you familiar with that? Oh, yes. This particular shooter, no, no, but the, the platform, absolutely. I, I can see right now, the, the optics, this is like, this is it. We're gonna break it in today, you're gonna love it. Awesome. You're gonna fucking love that thing. My brother, this is absolutely, I got a quick SIG story, I'll tell you that, um, and this is, I love SIG, uh, first of all.

• 4:40Speaker 05

  So, uh, we transitioned from wheel guns and our first semi autos was, uh, the SIG Auer and I had a 226 and. You used a 226? I love it, it was. Oh, I used a 226. So, I was in, right after we did the transition, you know, to, to semi from the wheel gun. Um, we were unfortunately in, in a shooting in Juliet, Illinois. And, um, so everything was fine on the shooting, uh, get back, shooting review team comes out. They didn't care about anything other than, did you decock before you put it back in the holster? And I was like, well, what about the guys that were shooting at us? They're like, yeah, yeah, whatever. Did you decock before you put it holster? And I was like, you know what? I did.

• 5:20Speaker 05

  They just wanted to make sure that during that transitional period, we got that muscle memory for the decock. And it was hilarious. And that was the. That's the only question. They're really correct. They said everything else, I go, well, this happened, this happened. They're like, yeah, fine. However, did you decock before you holstered the gun up? And I was like, yes, I did. That sounds like a conversation that would have been had in the, uh, SEAL teams as well.

• 5:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was kind of funny. But no, I love, I shot SIG my whole life and I, I, it's a great. It's a great pistol, man. Right on. I love it too. I'd love that one more, though. No, brother, this is like if Christmas, this is Christmas right now for me because this is, we have a few AR platforms at our house, maybe, maybe not. Uh, but this is what, this is definitely what, you know, if I had the like Christmas list of every check off, so please thank your, your friends at SAG, man, I greatly appreciate it. That's, that's, that's, it's exciting. Right on, right on. I got another person for you, too. Gun gear is exciting.

• 6:24Speaker 05

  This is where it's at, though, brother. And I thank you for that. I thank you for that. You're welcome. If you don't mind, I don't have a, a long gun to give you. That's alright. However, I do have a couple of things. Um, this you could, this is my wife's, alright? No guy gives another guy anything that's in a friggin envelope, right? So I told her, I go, I can't do that. And she's like, no, no, you can't. Alright, this is, uh, we have an advanced undercover program.

• 6:50Speaker 05

  This is our, our coin, uh, if you play coins or not, but this is, uh, it's, it's a small group of individuals, very small group of guys. Um, they do stuff all over the country, um, and other places. Uh, it's just a, uh, it's, it's a small group, but they're highly motivated individuals and to this day still do some incredible stuff undercover, so. Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. And then this is, so this is a compass, um, that I got you because, um, especially with your stuff when it comes to exploitation of children that you've been doing and stuff like that. Um, it's hard not to, you know, mentally when you see that and you do that kind of work, and I know people that are in that investigative arm, um, it takes a toll.

• 7:32Speaker 05

  And, and when you see that, you get so freaking mad that you just want to tear people's throats out, don't participate in that type of activity, so. Um, so this is a compass and the inscription is, first seek the counsel of the Lord. And so that's a Bible verse that, um, King Jehesaphat.

• 7:52Speaker 05

  Was asked to participate in a war with the uh the king of Israel and he said, okay, but first seek the counsel of the Lord. Well, the king of Israel didn't. They got their ass handed to them. So going back to it, everybody we look at, when you're fighting those demons and you're going out and fighting those people, man, you gotta stay in that, stay in that zone and the seek the first, seek the counsel of the Lord, man. And I can tell you from my own experiences, that really is something else, man. It really gives you a sense of peace and you know what direction you're going to. So, good luck with all that, man. I'm glad you're in the fight, seriously.

• 8:27Shawn Ryan?

  That's heartfelt. Thank you. That means a hell of a lot.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.

• 8:32Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 8:35Shawn Ryan?

  One more thing.

• 8:36Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 8:36Shawn Ryan?

  Before we get going, I got a Patreon account.

• 8:38Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 8:39Shawn Ryan?

  It's a subscription account. They're the reason that we get to sit down here today. So they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question. This is from James Cutberth. What key lessons from your career would you impart to current law enforcement professionals? And how was your perspective on redemption and second chances evolved when reflecting on individuals who like Mel Chancy have left that lifestyle behind?

• 9:07Speaker 05

  Well, I would say for law enforcement today, I think just, and I started in 1987, I think the, the level of professionalism that's out there today around the country of the guys that are first responders in law enforcement is, it's awesome. These guys, I've been involved in helping with training at different points in time and these guys are all dedicated to duty. I think finding that balance of home life and your family and still going out and doing this stuff every day, I mean, that's paramount. I think that the redemption of Mel Chancy is, that's the reason I'm here. It's not about doing all this undercover or infiltrating whatever, you know, it's been, that story's been told

• 9:51Speaker 05

  like a million times. But a guy that would actually go from living that life of violence and then making a change, finding a Lord and changing his life and doing it for all the right reasons and what this guy's become now, it's, it's amazing. And I'm proud to be his friend.

• 10:09Shawn Ryan?

  So hell of a guy. Learned that yesterday.

• 10:11Speaker 05

  Piece of work.

• 10:11Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Wow.

• 10:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:15Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, well, thank you. So I got it. This is a little off topic before we get into your story, but, uh, I was reading something or talking to somebody. I can't remember, maybe a couple of weeks ago. And it was about undercover agents, federal agents, uh, state, whatever. Local police, ATF, CIA, DEA. And it was talking about AI and facial recognition. And it actually was a conversation with somebody, uh, that an old friend from my previous life and they were talking about, I think what they were saying was that, um,

• 10:55Shawn Ryan?

  agency will not be traveling with pseudo names anymore. And I was, I was, I was like, what? What the fuck do you mean? They're not traveling with pseudo names? And then it went into facial recognition and AI and how, how easy it is to dig shit up on people. And basically said that they weren't, nobody will be traveling under, everybody will be traveling under true name. And there may not be

• 11:22Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 11:23Shawn Ryan?

  undercover agents much longer.

• 11:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:26Shawn Ryan?

  You heard of this?

• 11:27Speaker 05

  Uh, yes and no. I think, um, the people that the AI stuff is just exponentially exploded across the board, uh, and from a security standpoint, we're always working, law enforcement is always like a step behind because they're trying to generally catch up to whatever the, the current things are that are going to be a threat to us is what we do. Um, and I know that, I know there's guys now in our program, the undercover program, advanced undercover program. They're working on how we're going to deal with that and the steps we're taking so far to kind of, what can we put out? But it, it, like we were saying, exponentially so fast has grown so quickly. It's, it's very, very, very difficult and it will be harder to do.

• 12:08Speaker 05

  Um, if you're in the short, like you're just in like a town and you're just buying a couple of guns off a gangbanger or you know, you're buying dope, um, on a smaller scale, you're probably not going to run into it, but you will run into it when you start to do. Grouped, organized groups because, you know, at the end of the day, they're doing our homework on us every day. They learn how we do. You know, if you talked to Mel yesterday, he was like, I know about Rico. I was trying to avoid Rico. Well, we still got you anyway because, you know, you didn't think it quite all the way through. And so we were able to get you. However, you know, there's always a learning curve on both ends. And, you know, we've got some incredible adversaries in the criminal community that are looking to really put it on us.

• 12:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 05

  And we're like, we've got adversaries around the world. They're looking to destroy us. You know, and they can't get us, can't invade us. You know, we got two oceans and some land above and below, but the only way they can do is is to get us from inside. So you're seeing a rise of these other, these violent groups, not only just street gangs and motorcycle gang stuff, but everything else that's out there that's trying to put us down.

• 13:14Shawn Ryan?

  Man, it's, it's, it's pretty crazy how fast the technology is developing and what it's affecting. And that's just something I never thought I'd hear.

• 13:26Speaker 05

  Exactly. I mean, we are backstopping. It used to be you got a criminal history and an undercover driver's license and you were good to go. If somebody had the ability to run like a credit history, you know, we were backstopped up all through that. You could do a pretty decent deep dive into somebody from where it was before, when I, I first started working and up until probably up till the point where I retired. It's really, I think it's kicked off in the last four or five years.

• 13:50Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 13:50Speaker 05

  Just immensely. But our, the people we had worked a lot with some people in Bragg and stuff and helped craft those backstopping measures for different groups and including ours.

• 14:02Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 14:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:04Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I mean, with the facial recognition, I mean, if you had any social profile as a kid, by the time you, you know, you graduate the academy for ATF, I mean, you're you're fucked.

• 14:15Speaker 05

  You are. You're totally screwed. Yeah, you really are. And it's like, I have nothing. So if you want to like, somebody wants to, I have no social media. I mean, I, I creep on my, my wife's every now and then to see what like everybody in high school was doing. But beyond that, I don't, I don't do any of that stuff, man.

• 14:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Speaker 05

  I just, I hunker down.

• 14:35Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you.

• 14:35Speaker 05

  Got my own little six. You, however, I think, you know, really, you can't even have an opinion anymore without.

• 14:44Speaker 05

  Somebody wanting to tear your throat out or kill you.

• 14:46Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. Tell me about it.

• 14:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm sure.

• 14:50Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking crazy.

• 14:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:52Shawn Ryan?

  If you don't think like me, fuck you.

• 14:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm gonna kill you. Like, okay, well, bring a friend.

• 14:56Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, my God.

• 14:58Speaker 05

  Well, and that's it. I mean, that's what I, you know, in my opinion, it's just like, the way, again, you can't invade us. Our adversaries around the world, they want to see us fail. They, they can't invade us. They cannot take us, they cannot beat our freaking military.

• 15:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:13Speaker 05

  They cannot. But they can, they can put fentanyl into our country.

• 15:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:18Speaker 05

  And they can let, the Dural can let every criminal out of the Venezuela prison and move them into the United States. That's that slow erosion of our country that, that is happening, you know, and people are just oblivious to it.

• 15:31Shawn Ryan?

  And the, and the, uh, the propaganda too, the bot armies, the...

• 15:38Speaker 05

  I know, brother.

• 15:38Shawn Ryan?

  Narratives. It's, uh, it's, warfare's definitely changed. That's for damn sure.

• 15:44Speaker 05

  Oh, no doubt. But you look at, like, I have a nephew that's over there now doing stuff and, uh, you know, I'm proud as hell of him. And, uh, he's proud as hell to be there.

• 15:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:57Shawn Ryan?

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• 16:55Speaker 05

  Well, let's get into your story. All right. Where'd you grow up? I grew up in suburbs of Chicago, not too far from where Mel grew up. So, in the same neighborhood, some of Mel's friends are actually, their parents live right behind my mom and dad, where my mom and dad lived, in Payless Heights. So, I grew up, regular, blue collar, everybody knows your neighbors. Nobody had any money where we were at, so we had just a nice little sense of community. And the neighborhood that I grew up in was very good. We had the neighbors, the Bayos. I remember my dad, those guys had no money. And they would get together, smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and figure out how, "All right, you're working three jobs here, I'm working two jobs here.

• 17:40Speaker 05

  We only have two cars, your wife wants to go to nursing school. Let's buy a car together and then we'll rotate. That'll be the car that your wife takes to nursing school." And these guys would come up with this, just trying how to get ahead and live their life. And they were just, I remember I was probably six or seven, listening to their, Mr. Bayo, and my dad just sitting down, drinking a cup of coffee, trying to figure out how they're gonna navigate life. Damn. Right on. And even that, I look back now and like, you know, how everybody gets it with their dad at some point. My dad was the biggest ass that I'd ever met in my life, from the time I was 17 to like 22. And then all of a sudden, after I was 22, I was like, "You know what? This guy's just, maybe he knows a couple of things, maybe he's lived a little bit of life."

• 18:23Speaker 05

  So, yeah, but that's kinda how I grew up. Those were, that's where I was at. What were you into? Played baseball.

• 18:32Speaker 05

  Athletic? Yeah, yeah. Played baseball, and just, I was on a couple of traveling baseball teams, you know, all through high school. But I had jobs, I worked at a lumberyard, so I started working there and I would do side jobs out of the lumberyard. My dad was a science teacher, but he made his money doing side jobs in construction. He was that guy, could fix anything, do anything. So... Great skill set as far as that goes now. Um, you know, I can pretty much put additions on my house if I wanted to, you know, I don't do that anymore, but when I had to, I could. Um, so that's kind of how I just kind of started. I always, I was a night watchman at the local palest pool, which meant when the manager left at 10 o'clock at night, all

• 19:15Speaker 05

  my friends came over with beer and dunes and we swam and drank all night while I was watching to make sure nothing happened at the pool. (laughing) Um, so yeah, that was, that was kind of where I grew up at. It was, um, we, like Mel talks about too, when we were growing up, that whole area, kids were always fighting. Everybody was quick to go to hands, you know? I mean, but it was, you know, it was just the south side of Chicago, man. That's just how it was, south suburbs. Did you guys know each other at all? I knew of him. You did know of him? By being virtual of the Hells Angel president. Uh, but I, I had never met him, but I knew, it was funny, um, the local attorney, uh, local prosecutor for palest sites, used

• 19:56Speaker 05

  to train at the same gym that Mel did and Mel was friends, you know, they talked together. They weren't like going out for coffee friends, but they knew each other and Mel let him ride. He rode a Harley, so Mel let him ride next to him one time, going from point A to point B or something like that. Well, that guy was best friends with my mom and dad. So when we were doing the Hells Angel case, why, he was talking to my mom about something and uh, my mom goes, well, I think he's doing some motorcycle. And so he, he kind of, and I'm like, so right away mom's opsec gets fricking completely cut off at that point, you know, and we had to put her on probation for a while on what she said. But uh, but that was, in that community, everybody kind of knew each other, you know? And you knew who the asshole kids were and you knew who the good kids were and, you

• 20:41Speaker 05

  know, you tried to stay away from the asshole kids, but you know, you tend to run around with them a little bit from time to time. So, yeah, so that was kind of where both of us grew up at. It was kind of the, the south suburbs of the seventies and eighties, sixties and seventies, yeah. Where do, where do we go from here? I don't know. What would you like to get into? I went to college and didn't like it, but I got through it. I have a degree in environmental studies biochem, but I knew there was no way I wanted anything to do with that. So I quickly got a doubled up and got an associate's degree in criminal justice. And I think the first thought about doing law enforcement came from, we had taken, I went to school, Manchester College in Indiana.

• 21:25Speaker 05

  And Indianapolis, Indiana has a boys' school down there for, you know, juvenile delinquents, as they used to call them, kids that had done some serious crime and they were down there locked up. We'd done it like an outside tour and we were able to interview one kid. And on the way back, I was telling the professor, I go, you know what, why don't, I'm, I'm young enough. I go, how about you just put me in there as an inmate for three weeks? And I'll tell you what's really going on, you know, because it just seemed like the kid was too polished that was talking about the institution and how things were. And of course, you talk to the, you know, the supervisors and the social workers and things like that. But I was like, man, you really want to know what's going on. I go, put me in there. And he's like, would you go? And I go, in a minute, no problem. So we get

• 22:10Speaker 05

  back to college and he goes, I'm gonna run it up the chain and see what will happen. I'm like, alright. So I'm getting kind of excited. I'm like, man, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go down there and be locked up and see what happens and see what I can learn. And I meet him like the next day and he goes, there's no fucking way they're gonna let you go down there and be locked up in this place. I go, come on, man, I'll sign our thing and get out. And so that was my first, like, if you really want to know what's going on, you know, go out and meet these guys face to face and, and figure it out. How old were you then?

• 22:42Speaker 05

  Nineteen, twenty. Shit. So you wanted to do undercover work for them? Yeah, I didn't really know that, but what that was, but I thought, what better way, you know, I can listen to a million guys telling me what time of day it is about something over here. Well, you've never been there. So, you know, what if we go there and let's take a look and figure it out. So it seems like a better option. Did you have any ambition to be a law enforcement officer as a kid? I took a vice and drug abuse class and the guy that did it was a Cook County Sheriff's Deputy Deputy that was doing undercover and he was telling a couple of stories and I was like, oh yeah, that's. And then my baseball coach was a Chicago Police Department Violent Crimes Detective. And he was like, just, he was just this.

• 23:25Speaker 05

  Good looking, ages, Rico Suave kinda guy. He just was such a, and a good man, a great coach. Uh, and I told him, after listening to a couple of stories, you know, I was like, you know, Pete, I think I wanna be a cop. He goes, you wanna go to the feds? He goes, don't, he goes, Chicago's done. And this was like 1976. He goes, he goes, get, he goes, don't, don't go to this city. Um, he goes, try for the federal government. And I was like, alright. So, I had no idea I would end up doing that, but just how that guy's persona was, who he was as a person, and how he carried himself, I was like, you know, that's, I would wanna be that guy. You know, he was no nonsense, but very fair. Uh, and then our youth group

• 24:09Speaker 05

  at church, we had a female police officer, Sugat, who was, um, she ended up retiring as a lieutenant on a suburban department. Uh, another just, I just liked the way they had that calm around them, you know, things didn't, they weren't flying off the handle and getting all spun up on stuff. They just had an easygoing, problem solving type mentality. And I thought, yeah, that's, I think I wanna be like that. And so that was kinda like, for me, that's kinda got me into it. Right on. Right on. Why did you pick the ATF? I had, uh, my ex brother-in-law was with DEA in Miami back in the Cook County Cowboy days. Holy shit. Yeah, and, uh, Oh, but he's got some fucking stories.

• 24:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's got a couple. Um, he transferred DEA up to Detroit, and then he wanted to get back to Chicago. And Chicago was, ATF was hiring at the time. And so they took him as a lateral. So he got to ATF, he really didn't know about, a lot about ATF. He worked with them in, in Florida, in Miami back in the day, but, um, said didn't know a lot of the guys or stuff. And he got in, he goes, man, this is awesome. He goes, this is like, friggin', we're small. He called it the Marine Corps of Federal Law Enforcement. He goes, you got no money, no support, but hey, can you go out here and kick ass and, and get with these friggin' most violent guys and, and put them in jail? And, uh, and he, he dug it. And I thought, alright. And then I had another friend that was a Cook County

• 25:33Speaker 05

  State's attorney. His brother was an ATF agent up in Rockford, Illinois. So I talked to him about it, and he says, man, best job ever. And I'm like, Wow. So I just, right place at the right time, got an application in, took the test, and, um, took me about two years to get, finally get on, get hired. Really? What took so long? Just the There was a Background checks. Yeah, it was background check stuff. And then there was a, there was a hiring freeze, I think in eighty-five or eighty-six. They weren't putting people on. So had to wait for that to end. And then ATF hired, mass hired between eighty-six and probably ninety, they put on a lot of people.

• 26:14Speaker 05

  Finally got the okay to do it and they put a lot of people on and, and we were doing, we're doing pretty good. Agent wise at that point, I think we had maybe twenty-three hundred agents around the country at that point, at the most. And we still don't have pretty much any more than twenty-three hundred agents around the country. We've never, we've always been that political football, you know? The three largest lobbying groups, alcohol, tobacco and firearms in DC. So it was always in their best interest to keep us functioning, but let's not give them a lot of money. I think Reagan actually was going to disband us at one point. And we had two agents that were working the South Florida violent crimes task force during the Colombian maritalito Cuban war, the cocaine cowboys days.

• 26:59Speaker 05

  And we had two agents get killed down there undercover while they were doing the job. And they had gotten RIF notices that basically they're going to disband ATF, you know, at some point here. And you guys, and these guys went out and did the job anyway. And I was like, you know, this, I like, I like how these guys are thinking. And I was like, I'd be an honor to be a part of that. People that like, you may not have a job in the next six months, year, year and a half, but go down there doing it anyway. It was part of the vice presidential task force that Reagan had. I think Bush was the one that ran it.

• 27:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, and we had Eddie Benitez and Ari Orio were shot in two separate undercover deals and killed. So it was, that kind of started, people are like, well, what are these guys doing? You know, they taking some farmer's shotgun from up in northern Michigan? And they're like, no, these guys are down there going face to face and toe to toe with some bad people. Yeah, so it kind of changed the mentality a little bit. At that point, they didn't disband us and then we were kind of off to the races after that.

• 28:04Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, so ATF's always been hated.

• 28:07Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, we kind of, yeah, we're okay.

• 28:10Shawn Ryan?

  So what is, what is, could you just describe, what is the job of the ATF? Because all we, all we hear is they're taking, they're taking our short barrel rifles, they're taking,

• 28:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:22Shawn Ryan?

  They're taking suppressors. Carbine pistols are illegal today, tomorrow they're legal, next week they're illegal again. What, so what is the?

• 28:32Speaker 05

  All right, so ATF has two functions. There's a regulatory function, it's a regulatory side of the house. So the explosives, firearms licensing, FFL, explosive storage and sales of explosive, it's all kind of run through ATF. So they keep a lid on, not a lid on, but they can track explosives, you know, that kind of, the FFLs that have a license, you know, they do inspections to make sure they're current, you know, following the protocol and stuff like that. And then you've got the enforcement side, and that's the side I worked on. And so that was, from the minute I started, it was always about violent crime. And so what you would have is the legislature won't do its job completely and say, this is legal or this is illegal.

• 29:15Speaker 05

  So they'll say, okay, short barrel rifle. Well, what constitutes a short barrel rifle? So ATF then has to make a decision using regional council and firearms technology branch guys to get together. And they're like, okay, does this fit what the intent of the legislature was? And then sometimes they're like, yes, so you can't have this. And sometimes it's no, so you can't have this. So it's that constant, rather than be specific about what's legal and is illegal. These guys have led it up to, and we're not the only agency that they've, they've told that out to. DEA does that for some of the drug stuff. Environmental Protection Agency, you know, they come up with their own policies and procedures, what people can do and can't do based on, you know, their, what they've been.

• 29:58Speaker 05

  Powers to be given from Congress. So, in my opinion, ATF should be cut and dry. This is it, this isn't it. Everybody knows. Let's go here. But I think you could, the silencer stuff and, and the machine guns and stuff like that, um, I think if I'm not mistaken, it was 1936 where they enacted the first statute against that. And it wasn't that they made silencers and machine guns illegal. What they said was, okay, you know, the government at that point still believed in the sovereignty of the states. So, states' right to regulate itself. So, what they did was say, oh, we're gonna put a tax on it. You can have a machine gun, but you gotta call us up, pay $250, whatever the tax was, the transfer tax, and let us know you have it. It's just like a bomb. Like, you can build your own bomb if

• 30:40Speaker 05

  you like, but you gotta put a serial number on it, and you gotta pay the tax. Well, no bad guy is gonna do that, pay the tax, or put a serial number on a destructive device. And so, that's where it come in. Now, you have an unregistered, an NFA, or unregistered, unregistered machine gun or shotgun. So, now ATF can take action against you. Gotcha, gotcha. So, how was it? How was the academy? Uh, when I went through, it was, uh, it was eight weeks of basic criminal investigation school, and it was eight weeks of, um, just stuff specific to ATF. Uh, so it was 16 weeks altogether. Now, I still, I still teach down there. I teach field ops, and now it's 26 weeks. Holy shit.

• 31:23Speaker 05

  So, it's a pretty, um, they've really, I was telling you, a great friend of mine, Sergeant Lesnar, from the Ranger Battalion's now. He runs our, our training down there, and has for the last few years. And, uh, just a completely squared away kid. And, uh, well, I'm not kidding anymore. He's close to retirement, but I'm old. So, everybody's still quasi on a job as a kid, but just a squared away guy. And we have, over the years, we've, we have a couple SEALs that are ATF agents. We have a lot of Ranger Battalion guys, a lot of Marines. Um, and it's, uh, it's a good group of, and then we have, you know, right out of college kids, too. Um, that kind of thing. So, it's a good mix. The last class I taught at, uh,

• 32:05Speaker 05

  most recently, they were, they were really good, really squared away. Um, it was fun to watch them, like, kind of progress. And then, I teach field ops, which is the last two weeks. Where we have like a whole city set up role players and so they work a case from beginning to end over that two work period of time. We do undercover. We deal with informants. We do search warrants. We have a robbery situation where you got to go in and extract the undercover or the CI. We've got hostage barricaded situation. So they run through all this stuff and hopefully they've learned everything they've learned in all the blocks building up to that point. Then now's their time to execute it. So it's, it's, it's fun. It's a, it's, it's the most enjoyable part of, of the academy. I'll bet. Final FTX.

• 32:50Speaker 05

  Yeah. It's awesome. What did you want to do? Did you want to go undercover right off the bat? Yeah, I, I was lucky. I got, um, I had some great mentors. Um, when I started, I started in 87, got through the academy. I was doing stuff, working undercover by mid 88. You were undercover within a year? Oh yeah. That was back in the day where here's your gun and badge. Go catch somebody. Like, okay. You know, it was, um, like I said, it was a, it was kind of a whole different program. And my boss, the first day on the job goes, I don't know what you know about undercover work or ATF work or federal law enforcement. He goes, my group works undercover. That's what we do. He goes, there's a Corvette over there. There's money in this box. You

• 33:32Speaker 05

  know, you want to use a different gun, get a different gun, but go out there, start buying doping guns and make some arrests. And I was like, right fucking on, man. Holy shit. I'm like, I'm good to go. That's awesome. And then, um, there was a guy, John Rotuno, which was probably, uh, there's, we have some great undercover agents in ATF. I don't, no one hears about them or anything, but I look at those guys and they're just unbelievable what they've done. I had this guy, John Rotuno. Um, the Vice Lord Street Gang was, uh, remanufacturing hand grenades. And so what they're doing, they're going to an army surplus shop and they'd get the Mark Deuce, you know, the frag from World War II. They'd buy a bunch of those and then they would also buy the old, um,

• 34:15Speaker 05

  smoker aid fuses, which are completely different than an actual.

• 34:20Speaker 05

  Hand grenade fuse. This has a timer. This one doesn't. So when they repacked all the black powder that they did in the hand grenade and they screwed in this fuse, three guys showed up to the hospital with half their face blown off, their arm gone because they pulled the thing and thought, watch this, you know, this will be funny, hold my beer. And then the thing goes off immediately because there's no delay. So they were like, so they had a couple of guys. So John Rattuno interviews one of these guys because obviously it's a destructive device and that would fall into, it's basically a bomb. So John interviews this kid and he was so pissed off because the gang hadn't come, put any money, you know, helped

• 35:02Speaker 05

  his family out or anything. He's got no arm. So he goes, I'll tell you what's going on. And so John gets his kid to introduce him to the, it was the Undertakers. It was a faction of the Vice Lord Street Gang. And we were getting, showing up, Chicago PD was picking up these devices that had exploded. Obviously they found some way to get it away from them before it blew them up. So what they started doing was they put everything in a ball mason jar and screw the top on. They pull the pin and then they would throw the mason jar. It would break and then the pun would expel and it would set off the bomb. So that's how they were reconfiguring their, their hand grenades. So John gets introduced to these Undertaker Vice Lords

• 35:44Speaker 05

  and he starts buying these remanufactured, they'd had, they had like, I don't know, 60 of them. So John bought, immediately, you gotta get that, we gotta get that off the street, you know. So John buys like all of them. Well, he kind of even gracious himself and to the club. So he ends up, or to the gang, he ends up doing, in a two-year period of time undercover, every day with these assholes. He did 120 defendants, all gun and dope buys. I don't, at least a dozen murders they ended up, I think, charging that he'd got conversation about their criminal activity and what they were doing. And they ended up arresting them on what's called a CCE, Continuing Criminal Enterprise, where you have a leader and then your five or more people underneath you that

• 36:28Speaker 05

  That pay up to or take orders from the leadership. So it's a, it's a way to get everybody wrapped up. And so they charged him with a CCE. So he did 120 defendants and I would watch him every day go to the West Side of Chicago, the worst neighborhood in the city. He's just this yoked up Italian dude and he was just whipping a game on these guys. Wow. I was like, I was like, I wanna, I wanna be that guy. And so that I started like, okay, let's figure this out. You know, what can I do? And those are guys. I worked in an organized crime group and we had two guys, John Mazzola and Jimmy Delordo. And they were like old school Italian paisans from the, from the South Side.

• 37:08Speaker 05

  They, but they had a great ability to read people and are just great, true investigators. And so they had, they were, they solved murders. And it's usually a firearm was involved. The one case they did on a guy, Warner Hartman, was a, a real rich man that had those stereo company, a stereo car installation. So you put your stereo in your car and got huge speakers and stuff like that. And he was a multimillionaire, falls in love with a stripper, of course, and then tales old as time. And so he's got two kids that he's with. The strippers actually got a boyfriend, surprise. And so he takes a MAC-10 that someone had converted to full automatic and kills him

• 37:53Speaker 05

  one night. So because it was, clearly it was a machine gun by how the pattern was, John Mazzola, one of the agents, was working another case and was able to show that the guy that made and sold the machine gun to this guy was also a guy that John had bought a machine gun off of also. And they started to get conversation. So they were kind of putting two, two together. They go up and they figured, obviously she was involved. They kind of ID'd who the shooter was. It was the boyfriend of the stripper. And I remember Jimmy Delordo, they had changed the will. So his little girl's got nothing out of his $2 million life insurance policy, but the stripper girlfriend got everything.

• 38:36Speaker 05

  So someone had to change not only the will, but also the life insurance policy. And the only person that could do that would be the guy that sold him the policy. So they get all the bank records from this, from this company. And Jimmy tells me, and I'm brand new, and he would always stick his. Like a tongue and he, when he was thinking about somebody, he goes, that lazy bitch wrote that guy a check. He goes, the lazy bitch wrote a check. I'm, I'm sure of it. So he gets the bank records. So I'm sifting through all these checks. He goes, look for one about 10 to 20 grand that went to this guy. I'm digging through like four or five days, bank records, going through, going through. Sure enough, there's a check, $15,000 that she had written to the insurance guy to change the, the beneficiaries of the insurance. And

• 39:21Speaker 05

  so he ends up going to jail with her and the shooter and stuff. But that was, like, those were the cases I was exposed to when I first started. And I was like, man, this is, wow, this is what I want to do. So it's kind of different than what the general perspective of ATF is and how we do what we do. But, um, I, I worked, that's, that's all I ever did was cases like that.

• 39:43Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what do, what do you do when they say, you, you had an eight week academy, you show up and they say, there's cash, there's guns, there's fucking cars, go get bad guys. Where, where do you start? Well, I have no network.

• 39:58Speaker 05

  Well, that's, that's the first thing you do is that network. And I, a couple of guys in the group said, here's a couple, uh, Illinois State Troopers that we work for. Um, I ended up going down to Illinois State Police District, District Five Post in Juliet. And I met some guys in the Cooperative Police Assistant Team, they called it CPAT. And I just introduced myself and I said, hey, man, this is kind of my area. I go, if you guys can plug me in on anything, um, you know, I'll, I'll do whatever it takes. They were working some stolen cars from some organized crime guys. So the first couple of things I did was just buy stolen autos for these guys out of the task force. And so that's kind of how I got started. And then I would always ask, you guys got any pistols, got any guns? And it was always gang bangers or, you know, uh, some organized group that was into nefarious

• 40:42Speaker 05

  activity. And so, you know, I just embed myself with those guys and we do the best we can to put a case on them. And that's always.

• 40:49Shawn Ryan?

  How would you embed? I mean, especially as a new guy.

• 40:52Speaker 05

  Uh, there's, you could do cold call, which is one way you just show up.

• 40:55Shawn Ryan?

  Do you guys train for this shit in the academy back then?

• 40:59Speaker 05

  Yeah. At the end, the last two weeks, that field operations was the same thing. We've been teaching that since, you know, Jesus lost his sandals.

• 41:07Shawn Ryan?

  And that's enough? I mean, I guess that's enough.

• 41:09Speaker 05

  No, actually, no, it's, it's not enough. We have advanced schools that we put on too. But back in the day, at the time, it was like throwing the water to learn how to swim. And so that's how you cut your teeth. We just put your head in the game and start, start rolling. And that's what we did. So what, what did you do specifically? Um. Build a network. Who do you start with? I started with the Illinois State Police and we, uh, I was doing, I did some gang groups down there and I kinda rolled into by 1990 had done, um, the Outlaws Motorcycle Gang had a clubhouse in Juliet and had developed an informant that, um, I knew about motorcycle gangs and we, you talk about them and we're, you know, we're instructing on them along

• 41:53Speaker 05

  with traditional organized crime and street gangs, you know, in, in the academy. Um, and we had developed an informant that was associated with them. And I, I knew about them, but I didn't, I didn't know what the lifestyle was. I didn't know, you know, I could ride a Harley with no problem, but I didn't know about gangs. So the informant kinda brought me up to speed, how things work and, um, introduced me to a couple of the people in the Joliet, um, Joliet group of the Outlaws. And so I bought, uh, we bought dope out of the clubhouse, bought dope off a few of the guys. They all had guns. So after we did some dope buys, I found that I'd gotten introduced to the Colombian that

• 42:38Speaker 05

  was actually providing the cocaine to not only the Outlaws, but everybody else, you know, in that area. So I kinda moved over into his group and I bought dope and some pistols off of his underlings. And then we rolled up to a guy that was his number two, bought some dope off that guy and a pistol. We do a search warrant. He cooperates. We have the Colombian deliver five keys to us and then we took them off. So it's one of those things where you start building. I started getting, once you get in the criminal community and you start, you know, you show yourself as a criminal or a guy that's hungry looking to come up, you know, I'm just trying to come up, you know, trying to make money, just one of you. Um, and you got a little bit of gift of gab, you know, at that time I just, for whatever reason, had the ability to do that. And so we rolled through the Outlaws.

• 43:23Speaker 05

  We ended up seizing their clubhouse in Joliet on Oak Street. Um, I think 90 or 90. And it might have been later, ninety-two, maybe. Um, so we did, I think, four or five of those guys. We did the Colombian, and then we did the Colombians group. So it was like my first, like, getting into an actual group or organization and kind of seeing how it, how the criminal community really runs.

• 43:46Shawn Ryan?

  But there's a lot more to it than that. I mean, I've, I've not done undercover work, uh, near as extensive as you have, but I have, I've done it on multiple occasions for multiple outfits. Uh, I mean, I, I, there's just, there's a lot to deal with. How do you do, when you're conducting surveillance as an undercover guy, I mean, everybody that fucking passes by you, the paranoia that you deal with is, everybody's watching me. I'm fucking compromised at every corner I go to. Oh, why did that guy fucking drive by so slow?

• 44:21Speaker 05

  That hyper vigilance.

• 44:22Shawn Ryan?

  Who's this fucker with the dog that just took a shit next? You know what I mean? Like, what? How are you?

• 44:27Speaker 05

  That's why after thirty years of doing it, I was in my basement in the middle of the night pacing back and forth.

• 44:32Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, that's...

• 44:33Speaker 05

  Cause I was like, I had lost my mind.

• 44:36Shawn Ryan?

  And, I mean, you, so you go with a biker, the outlaws, then you're in the Colombian cartel. I mean, it's just, so you're just, you continue to weave through these things and you're just building more and more and more.

• 44:50Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 44:51Shawn Ryan?

  Uh...

• 44:53Speaker 05

  Undercover's like sales. At the end of the day, it's your salesman. So I go in, I meet a guy, sometimes it's a cold call sales. Like, hey, how you doing? I think you need windows. Alright, let me, I'm gonna sell you some windows. Or you might get an introduction from somebody. So say, this is my friend, or this is my cousin, or this is a guy that, you know, he's trying to eat, he's a good guy, I vouch for him. You might have that type of, of introduction. And then you just start to play off that. And it's about selling yourself. But you're right. It's, uh, this one guy at the academy, um, he said it so succinctly. He goes, if you ever see a swan going across a, a, a smooth pond, and it looks beautiful, so swans just float, but underneath, it's fricking,

• 45:34Speaker 05

  he's just paddling like a motherfucker to get across. But it looks fucking smooth on the top. That's what undercover is. In your head. You're thinking, how am I gonna move this from point A to point B? Does this guy like me? Is he gonna kill me? Is he gonna rob me? We get robbed occasionally on a few times. Is he gonna jerk his pistol and go to work? Um, has he set me up to get somebody else to do me? You know, it's all that, you're constantly thinking that. And working in that in your head, what am I gonna do if? You know, you're constantly reassessing the situation. Like when we do the, the, the bike gang stuff. Um, after being with the club, like Mel's guys, when they were henchmen up in Rockford, you know, going to clubhouse, not everybody likes you.

• 46:17Speaker 05

  You know, I think I'm a pretty personal guy and everybody should love me. But you get in that mix with these people and some people are like, there's something about you I don't fucking like. And you're like, okay. So now how am I gonna win over this guy? Am I gonna, I'm not gonna fricking be patting him on the head. No, come on, man, like me. So you gotta figure a way to get this guy to like you. And a lot of, sometimes we'll do street theater where we'll do some other criminal act with another agent and this guy will watch. And like, okay, well, maybe this guy's about it. And so we do that. And it, uh, undercover is like. How do you stage that? We just figure out, we do, um, I don't wanna give away too much stuff cause guys are out there still doing it, but we'll do a crime. We might hire these guys to act as a lookout. Here's all you need to do.

• 47:02Speaker 05

  Like I, one time, Mira and I have gone up to a guy and said, hey, look, man, $500. All I need to do is have a walkie talkie and be at the end of this road. If you see anything, a car that, even a car, even if it's not a cop, you get on right away and you say, hey, it does look good. I go, and then you drive away. It's all I needed to do. But while I'm doing that, I got a bag of guns. And he's like, what are you up to? I'm like, just watch for the car. He's like, okay. Now, I haven't told him anything, but he's starting to think it and said, what the fucking dude up to? You know, what's he got going on? Didn't he wanna know? All criminal groups, everybody's looking to move up, make more money, be more violent.

• 47:44Speaker 05

  So like if you're a guy that looks like you're a plug to get somebody into that, it's like, man, we'll see what those guys are about. We'll see if we can't move the ball forward with those cats. And that's, that's kinda how it works. So, street theater is a good way to, time builds credibility, and for undercover stuff, you don't generally have a lot of time to build that credibility. A lot of these guys in the criminal community, they've known each other for years. They've been criminals for years.

• 48:08Speaker 05

  And so now I'm the new guy. And so now you gotta kinda build that credibility in a short period of time. And sometimes it's, it's, it's hard to do. Sometimes it works and sometimes they're like, why don't you just go away? Like, okay. Damn.

• 48:28Speaker 05

  When it comes to, I mean...

• 48:34Speaker 05

  So, do you remember your first, your very first approach as an undercover guy? Mm-hmm. What was it? It was a sawed-off shotgun from a guy named Pig.

• 48:47Speaker 05

  What was, why were you after him? I, I, it was a favor to a local law enforcement. A lot of times, like, your local police department has resources, but they don't have undercover resources. Gotcha. So you might have the Al Capone in that, that community. This guy's name was Pig. He was Al Capone. He wasn't a cartel guy, but he was a guy that made the quality of everybody's life in that community shit. Because he was a bully, he was an asshole. He just, nobody liked him. His name was Pig. So, um, the sheriff called the CPAC guys and said, "You guys got a guy? We might be able to get a guy to introduce a guy to..." He's just, you know, he's got a sawed-off shotgun he wants to sell.

• 49:31Speaker 05

  You know, that's like not a case we would normally do, but they needed Al Capone, who was Pig, just removed from their community because it just made the quality of life of everybody else in that community. He was just that guy that was just a problem. And so I met Pig and it was my first, uh, it was the first undercover deal other than the cars for a, for a gun. And I was like, I mean, I was nervous. It's Pig, you know, this guy's fucking probably a cartel fucking level. Like I'm thinking he's the Al Capone of, you know, or I forget the small town it was Wilmington, Wilmington, Illinois, you know, population, you know, 120 people. Said, I'll go get Pig. So I get down there and the guy was just a, he was just an asshole, you know, so I bought the gun off him and then

• 50:16Speaker 05

  they, they took him off the next day and charged him in the state. So, but that's what my boss's attitude at that point in time was the federal government ATF, you know, law, local law enforcement is going to have so much that they can do and sometimes they can't maybe take it to the next step, maybe do a RICO, which is, were hard to do. Uh, jurisdictionally, they might have a bad guy that's coming out of another jurisdiction into their jurisdiction, doing crime and then leaving, you know, and if they don't catch them here, it might be problematic for them to go to another jurisdiction to get them, like another state. So because of that, because we have stuff like RICO and things, we can, that jurisdiction, we don't have those problems anymore. So we can charge that crime, excuse me, whether the guy was over here or over here, the

• 50:59Speaker 05

  crime was here and he's over here doing crime, we can charge them all together federally. And how, I mean, you're living in these communities. Hmm, sometimes yes, yeah. So, and you were married during a lot of this? I was married the first time for about, I have two wonderful kids. Um, I think I got married young and my first wife did not enjoy, um, the job. I'll bet she did. Did not enjoy it on any level. Um, and I think that, um, and I was not, um, I was not a good person either. Really, I was not good. I like to think of myself that I was, but I was like, I dove so much into doing the job that whatever she had going

• 51:44Speaker 05

  on, I was like, and then we, and it wasn't, I'm not saying it was just me. Um, you know, she had her issues too, and I, we got to the point where I go, this is, um,

• 51:56Speaker 05

  This is not good. And she hated the job. Every day was a problem. Every day was, why do you do this? Why do you look like that? A lot of that. Like, I go to kids events, you know, and I have to look like, you know, some chooch. You know, and they'd be like, why is Zack's dad look like that? You know, and I would tell the kids were really good at not saying anything. I say, look, guys, we can't talk about what dad does. That's just the way it is. We had codes. Like, we had one problem one time. We ran into a guy. Gave him the like, hey, we gotta go. No questions asked. In the car, we leave. Unfortunately, they knew way too much about violent crime and bad people at a very early age that I look back now and I'm like, probably was a good thing.

• 52:37Speaker 05

  But, um, so I was divorced, well, I separated and then eventually divorced, around 92 or so. And it just, um, I got to delve into the job after that. But then the problem with my ex, not problem with my ex-wife, it's that every other weekend, you have the kids and Wednesdays. So I was broke. I had no money. So, um, I was on the SRT team also at the same time. And so I had my kit was always in the apartment I lived in. So the kids would dig through it and, you know, put on the helmet, put the vest on and carrier. And so I say, hey, let's do quick peeks. They're like, what's that? I go, all right, let's say all the bad guys are in this room. And I'd put the stuffed animals on the bed. All right, you get one chance. You get a split second.

• 53:22Speaker 05

  One eye, quick peek. You come back, you tell me how many. So we made it into a game. So we started out doing just quick peeks. Like, and then my daughter, who was always way smarter than my son. I love them both, but she's an engineer and he's in law enforcement. He couldn't do math. So that's amazing. She was always, she picked up on everything. She was actually by six or seven, the most tactical girl. I mean, the stuff that would come out of her mouth when we were doing stuff. We had, uh, I did one setup in where I was in the apartment. There were two doors on either side, down a hallway, two doors. So you got two problems. And then a third door. So you got three problems you gotta solve as we move through to sweep this area. So, I mean, they're little and I got them, got a vest on and stuff. And so took terms being team leader.

• 54:08Speaker 05

  So my daughter would get in front right away, you know, and she loved to, you know, so she would get up and she'd give this. And we'd wait and she'd go, she'd give the nod. So I tap Zach, Zach taps her. She's like, go, go, go. So she would do a button hook and she wants Zach to do a cross the room. Um, and then we'd have one of the, one of the stuffed animals that have a pistol, you know, is that a shooter? Don't shoot. You know, that kind of thing. And then it got even more involved to the point where I was like, okay. They'd like, okay, what are we doing today? I'm like, all right. Got a warrant for Moose, which is a bad guy. Might, might be two people in the place. I go, what, what kind of entry we're gonna do? We're gonna do surround and call out? What, what are we gonna do? So Zach, my son is like, dynamic entry. We're going in it. I'm like, Andy's like, well, there's two people in there also.

• 54:53Speaker 05

  Are they separated? She starts, she's like seven at the time. Wow. So we would get up to clear the door and she'd say shit like Zach, when it was his team leader time. He'd go up, he's calling the shots. What's gonna happen? And he gets up there and he's kind of hesitating because there's three problems he's got to solve. Doesn't know which room Moose is in. So what do we clear first? What's the most dangerous? So he gets up there and she goes, I hear from my daughter, seven year old little girl. She goes, come on Zach, work the problem. Oh, man. I was like, I love you, man. Wow. So that's how, that's how we kind of, that's what we did. And we did that, you know, a bunch of times. And the unfortunate aspect of that was when I would go back to the, I had him on Wednesdays.

• 55:38Speaker 05

  So I would go, I'd brought him to the office. Sometimes they'd do their homework in the conference room and then we'd go out and do buys and then come back. So he had everybody in my group there and there'd be, you know, guns on the table and we're putting everything into evidence and stuff. And my kids are doing their homework. Um, I remember one time it was, uh, the DC sniper. Remember when that guy was going around killing people? Oh, yeah. Alright, so we were taking turns. People would be detailed out to DC. And so, um, Joey Russovich was in my group and, uh,

• 56:09Speaker 05

  I got tasked, I was gonna go out to DC, but also the time I would have been out there was the first daddy-daughter dance that I would have been able to go to. So Joey's in the room with me, my daughter's in there, he goes, "You know what? He goes, "I'll switch it up. I'll go, you know, and you can go to the dance." And I'm like, "Thanks, Joe, I appreciate that." So Joey catches a sniper, well, he doesn't catch the sniper, but on the perp walk when they come out, my kids are watching TV and there's Joey, he's caught the sniper. So my daughter's like calling me on the phone, "Dad, you're not even gonna believe it. Watching TV, Joey caught the sniper." So here's my kids that, they know what a sniper is, they know that he's killing people

• 56:50Speaker 05

  and taking their lives, so where their little heads were going at the time, I have no idea, but I'm sure they are two exceptional adults. And it worked out okay.

• 57:03Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome, man.

• 57:04Speaker 05

  But I can't imagine what, they must have been thinking at that time and, you know, it just, it was weird. I talked to my daughter later at one point, she actually talked to another agent's daughter that was having some issues and I remember she said, she goes, "Being little and being with your group of guys, and I saw how they acted with you, and when Joey said, you know, "If your dad ever has a problem, I'm gonna go in and get him." She goes, I was like, "Well shit, you know, it's all cool in the zoo, man. Joey's gonna be there if there's a problem, it'll be okay." And it was like, I was like, "Okay, I'm glad that you had that, you know, for yourself." Cause I, there's a lot of people, kids in law enforcement, that do not end up faring very well, and it's not just specific law enforcement, it's any time you have a father

• 57:48Speaker 05

  that's a little bit not there all the time, that's a tough thing, man. Fathers are very, very important.

• 57:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm realizing that. I got a four-year-old boy and it's, he needs dad.

• 58:02Speaker 05

  They all do, man, and you know, the breakdown of the family is one of the major problems in the country, you know, it's just that it, the nuclear family is, you know, just been shot, so.

• 58:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:16Speaker 05

  So having that and having the kids be able to have those experiences, it was hard, I think, a little bit, it was hard on them at different times, but. They turned out, okay, they're good. My daughter's an engineer. She's a biosystems, a mechanical engineer. She makes like biodiesel and now she's working. She was in Cheyenne, Wyoming, trying to be a, my dad was a kind of a horseman. He raced horses on a farm when he was a kid. He always wanted her to be a barrel racer. He goes, he called her Bug. He goes, Bug, you got the perfect legs. You're strong. You're an athlete. Cause she gripped that horse. You're super light and that pal may be whipping you around that, that arena on those barrels. She never ended up doing it, but that was, that was like my dad's goal for.

• 58:59Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Funny. Where I was going is, I mean, you're undercover in the same town or in the same area that you're living in. That's just something I've never, ever had to do.

• 59:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:10Shawn Ryan?

  Nor did I have a family when I was anyways. But, so how, how are you mitigating your own paranoia? How are you keeping your family from being compromised, killed, being trailed, tipping off where your kids live, who your wife is? I mean, it's a lot of shit to think about that I've never had to think about.

• 59:31Speaker 05

  When we first started doing it, um, the ability to find out who you were and where you were at was harder than it is now. Now there's, it's so easy to do. So there is difference. I, we always got trained up when we were getting trained or we still train it now. You always wipe yourself off when you leave. If you gotta go back and do another run, go someplace else. We always have, uh, we don't always have, but a lot of times we'll have an undercover apartment. Get done doing a deal, go back to the undercover apartment. You got eyes on the undercover apartment. You'll be in there. You'll sit down. Let's relax for a while. Maybe go out, go to a bar, get a sandwich, come back to the undercover apartment and have everybody that's your crew that's watching you observe to see, make

• 1:00:16Speaker 05

  sure everything is okay. And then go home from there. I used to do that for the, or the Henshman case. Had an undercover apartment about 30 miles outside of Rockford, you know, small town apartment. I would go there after I would meet. I'd sit there. I'd wait for a little while, like three or four hours. Make sure everything was everything. And then I'd do a couple of runs on my way out, clean myself off and then go home.

• 1:00:41Shawn Ryan?

  An SDR?

• 1:00:42Speaker 05

  Probably, yeah.

• 1:00:44Shawn Ryan?

  Did you just say that you had, uh, there was an element that was overwatching you? For a

• 1:00:49Speaker 05

  At times there weren't, at times there weren't. Um, it's a lot of manpower to have that go on.

• 1:00:55Shawn Ryan?

  I would think so.

• 1:00:56Speaker 05

  And when you do a long-term infiltration type thing, you're tying up an overwatch crew, or just guys in your group for, you know, now no one's doing anything except for this specific thing. And we were such a small agency, a lot of times you only ended up with like one or two guys on your cover team, which ended up saving our life at one point. Talked about it later, but, um, we didn't have a whole fucking group. So you were kinda on your own to make sure that you were safe when you got out of there. And I would always do my due diligence to make sure I was, I was wiped off and cleaned up before I, I went home.

• 1:01:36Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:02:15Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:03:00Shawn Ryan?

  It's sundaysfordogs.com/srs50. sundaysfordogs.com/srs50, or use code SRS50 at checkout.

• 1:03:14Shawn Ryan?

  Want more from the Sean Ryan Show? Join our Patreon today for more clips and exclusive content. You'll get an exclusive look behind the scenes where you can watch the guests interact with the team and explore the studio before every episode. Plus, unlock bonus content like our extra intel segments where we ask our guests additional questions, our new SRS onsite specials, and access to an entire tactical training library you will not find anywhere else. And the best part? Patreon members can ask our guests questions directly. Your insights can help shape the show. Join us on Patreon now, support the mission, and become part of the Sean Ryan Show's story.

• 1:03:58Shawn Ryan?

  Had you ever, have you ever had an incident where you were with your family? And a bad actor that you were after?

• 1:04:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was actually one of the guys on, one of Mel's friends. I ended up, I would take my kids to Odyssey Fun World. Early in the morning at nine o'clock before all the assholes came, like three o'clock, four o'clock in the afternoon, then it was crowded. You know, it is, you try to keep an eye on everybody and you're looking at everyone. So I would go in the morning when no one was there. And I remember one of Mel's guys was upstairs, I don't know if he was, I don't know if he had kids or is with like a girlfriend's kids or something, but they were doing something and he had his cut on. And unfortunately, my kids knew what henchmen, angels, outlaws, they knew all that stuff. So my son's bounding upstairs to go to this one game he always liked, video gaming he'd like to play.

• 1:04:50Speaker 05

  And he's, he's running up the stairs, I look up and I see this guy on the left side and I'm like, ah shit. And I would never let my daughter, we held hands and we played all the games together. She was never by herself. So she sees it at the same time I see it. And she goes, hey dad. I go, and I gave her the, the no sign. And I'm like, Zach? And he's like, you know, boys, Zach? He's running up, he's not listening. Probably gets to the top of the stairs and then he kind of sees it and he like turns around, his eyes are super big. So he leans up against like a pillar and I, and he looks down ass and I give him the like, let's go. And he can't let it go. So he like leans back against the wall and he goes.

• 1:05:39Speaker 05

  And I'm like, yeah. And then he's like, he comes out against the wall like he's Joe, like, it's all good. Yeah, he walks down the steps, get his hand. I go, we gotta go. He goes, yeah. So we go out. I go, hey dude, when I give you this, you just go. I don't need your sit rep, whatever the situation is at that point. I go, we're just, we're gonna frickin' exfil right now, getting a frickin' car out. And he's like, he's like, yeah, I know. He goes, are we afraid of that guy? I go, no, but you know what? He was up there with his kids and we wouldn't want anything to, we wouldn't want to argue man or, or have a problem with his kids up there. And they were like, okay, okay, right. Like, okay. So that was the only time that.

• 1:06:19Shawn Ryan?

  That's it?

• 1:06:20Speaker 05

  That was it.

• 1:06:21Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit, that's.

• 1:06:22Speaker 05

  Very.

• 1:06:23Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:06:23Speaker 05

  Bro, I tell you what, I look back at stuff and I am, it's like even coming to know the Lord and finding, getting back into faith, I am extremely thankful for where I'm at now compared to where I was by the time I retired. It's, I'm very fortunate, very fortunate. I worked with some great guys that I know would save me in a minute. And, um, yeah, I was very, very fortunate.

• 1:06:48Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have a plan for if that happened? I mean, how, how different was your cover story than your actual story? I mean, obviously.

• 1:06:54Speaker 05

  Pretty close. Um, I was, I mean, I can wrench on cars and stuff. I knew construction inside and out. I poured concrete too, framed houses, worked with my dad all the time. My dad was just jack of all trades. So it actually came in handy because it looked like you really were who you're purporting to be. I always had a set of tools in the truck. Yeah. So like when the brother's hot water tank went out, you know, I'm like, oh shit, bro, I got you, man. I'll swap that out for you. You know, so having the, having the ability to do that non-criminal stuff, just it helps your backstop story because now you become more real to these guys. Shit, he swapped out my hot water heater, you know, he's, cop's gonna do that, you know? And then any preconceived myth about undercovers, you know, that would always come in.

• 1:07:40Speaker 05

  And like what like, well, if you're undercover and I'm a bad guy and I ask you, are you now or you ever been a police officer? You got to tell me, otherwise it's entrapment. So that was like the big one. So a lot of those guys would say, are you now or have you ever been affiliated with law enforcement? You know, you'd be like, no. All right. Cause if you were, you'd have to tell me, otherwise it's entrapment. So we helped perpetuate that mystique, but I think everybody figured it out by now. But back in the day, that was one of the things. So, um, so they would ask you, you know, questions and stuff like that. It was just like, yeah. I'm lying, but it's okay.

• 1:08:23Speaker 05

  I'm lying, but it's okay.

• 1:08:25Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. So how did the, who did you go after first? Was it the?

• 1:08:30Speaker 05

  I started with the Outlaws. Yeah, I started the Outlaws case and it wasn't an infiltration. I didn't, those guys didn't know me more than a handshake, you know? And I wrote on the credibility of the informant. Um, and so it was just the Juliette guys. And it was like just enough to get probable cause for a search warrant and get the guns and, and the dope that we had purchased, we used. And then we bought enough dope out of the clubhouse that we were able to seize it federally seize it, forfeit it. So we took the clubhouse. Um, but it was that time that I met some of the guys. I, they didn't get wrapped up in that first case, but I met some of those guys, um, that ended up getting it on with Mel and his crew, uh, from, at the time they were in Antioch,

• 1:09:11Speaker 05

  Illinois, and then they moved up to, um, a small town right at the border of Illinois, Wisconsin, and then state line chapter, they were called of the Outlaws. And they'd moved up there. And so I had met some of those guys. I knew the, um, I met the president and, and again, just riding on the credibility. I didn't buy anything. I didn't talk to them about criminal activity. It was just kind of a meet and greet, you know? Spent a little time at the clubhouse in Antioch, but not very much. Um, you know, and that was about it, just getting seen. You know, you just can't run up on somebody and go, hey, got a machine gun? You know?

• 1:09:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:48Speaker 05

  Give me about, you know, it doesn't work. So you got to build that, get that foundation set before you move forward.

• 1:09:53Shawn Ryan?

  What, what is it that?

• 1:09:57Shawn Ryan?

  What's go criteria for the ask? I mean, how much time are you spending building their trust? Hanging out with them? You know, what is in your head? What is go criteria for, all right, I'm good enough. I can make the ask.

• 1:10:13Speaker 05

  Sometimes though, if they ask you a question like, dude, what are you trying to come up? Are you trying to eat? What are you like, what are you looking to do? And it'd be like, oh, fuck, no, you know, I got a plug over here for dope. I got this guy, but this guy's short. I don't know. If you got a guy, you know, yes, not you. I don't want to come to you for dope or guns. But if you got a guy that could hook me up, that'd be great. So a lot of times they're like, well, fuck, why give your money to that guy? You can deal with me directly. Oh, okay, great. Okay, I'll deal with you. So that's kind of the, you know, kind of the MO, but it's a vibe. You know, you gotta kind of feel it. You can tell how people act toward you. You know when people don't like you. And I'm sure you know that feeling. And so you get a, you get a good vibe for that.

• 1:10:57Speaker 05

  Have an understanding of how much to push and how much not to push. You know, how much to like kiss their ass for like, God, you guys are the best. And not be some suck ass that's, you know, you know, got these guys up on some pedestal. You're trying to be like.

• 1:11:14Shawn Ryan?

  How much time are you spending studying biker gang culture?

• 1:11:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, gotta do your homework. I did, when I first started, I, we went through the academy and I, you saw the sizzle reel. I was like, no one will ever in full, I'm like, fuck, come on, man. There's gotta be a way, you know, we can, gotta be a way to get in on these guys. And I knew that my predecessors, the guys that I admired in my organized crime group, they, they did some mob guys. So I'm like, I think every, if you find the right angle to come at them, everybody can get done. And every criminal can get, be had at some point. If you work it the right way.

• 1:11:51Shawn Ryan?

  Why did, why did they say that? I forgot. So, can you just elaborate on that for the audience?

• 1:11:56Speaker 05

  It's just hard, like motorcycle gangs.

• 1:11:58Shawn Ryan?

  The guy that said.

• 1:11:58Speaker 05

  There was a mystique for the motorcycle gang stuff. It was when I did it in, when I did the Mel's case, I think started in probably late. No, yeah, late 92, just doing the homework on the guys, like trying to figure out who's who in the zoo and what was going on. And then it wasn't until probably mid 93 that I really started it full time. And then it extended to almost 95 until I just got too violent and ATF said no more. But the workup on it was, you know, doing your homework, what are these guys about? But we didn't know what it was going to take to become a member of any of that.

• 1:12:39Speaker 05

  You know, they have, you know, there was always these rituals, you know? I remember one girl told me, she goes, agent, female agent, she goes, you know, it's kind of gross, but she goes, you know, you're gonna have to blow a dog.

• 1:12:51Shawn Ryan?

  What?

• 1:12:51Speaker 05

  What? She goes, yeah, to get in on these guys, you're gonna have to blow a dog. I go, are you fucking kidding me? She goes, that's what I heard. Like what you heard or what you know? And she's like, well, that's what, that's the rumor of how to get in this club. You're gonna have to do that. So I remember asking one of the henchmen up in Rockford, Monty Mathias, I go, I gotta blow a dog or some shit to get in here. He goes, dude, where'd you hear that? And I'm like, I didn't want to say a law enforcement professional telling me that's what you gotta get in. I was just like, nah, I just kind of, somebody told me that one time. He goes, dude, he goes, if I told you to blow a dog and you did it, I would send you on down the highway. He goes, no, we, we want men, not dog blowers. I'm like, okay, good. All right, I think I can, I can handle that. I'll be okay.

• 1:13:35Speaker 05

  So, yeah, so that was kind of, but yeah, it's, we didn't know. A friend of mine that's a West Point grad, that was also an agent, he was a helicopter pilot, flew Cobras, great guy. He had actually done a bike club called the Warlocks down in Florida. And he had met the president at the gym, this guy's West Point guy, just played football for a point. I mean, he's just solid, jacked up cat.

• 1:14:02Speaker 05

  The president liked him right away because he was a big dude. And he basically said, come on in, I'm gonna give you your own chapter. So he got himself and then like four or five other ATF agents, they developed their own chapter. The warlocks down there got patches and didn't have to prospectors start out or earn their way. They kinda just got by virtue of the fact that this guy really liked the West Point guy, Steve Martin was a great undercover. He said, no, we, we, you're okay, you're with us. They're like, we're gonna get you guys going. So they started their own chapter and they did a bunch of those guys down there. But that was, that was the only guy I had to talk to, great friend of mine. And I would compare notes like, how did, like, what are they asking you to do? Do you gotta commit a murder? Do you gotta do all this violent shit?

• 1:14:47Speaker 05

  He's like, I don't, for these guys down here, we got patched. I don't know what it's like to start from scratch and move up. I'm like, alright, so.

• 1:14:54Shawn Ryan?

  Do you, do you always, um, do you always start from scratch? Cause I mean, I guess starting from scratch. I don't wanna come across like I'm trying to diminish anything. So please don't take it away. But, you know, I mean, so I, I did some undercover work, a lot, most of it in the Middle East. And, you know, we would get these briefings on culture and all this shit. And of course, the briefings were always fucking off. So we get burned immediately. Yeah, I'd be like, I remember one time I walked this guy through an entire city and to clean him up. And he was, I had him walking through metal detectors and all this shit.

• 1:15:33Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:15:35Shawn Ryan?

  And we'd finally do the pickup after a couple hours and he gets in the car and he's like, that woman at the hotel, that was, that was you guys, wasn't it? And that guy at the fucking mall, that was also you guys. And I'm like, how do you know all this shit? And he's like, well, guy had the knife on the wrong side. The woman had, was wearing her fucking burka the wrong way. The sash was on the, and I was just like, man, we are a fucking clown show.

• 1:15:59Speaker 05

  We gotta go back.

• 1:16:00Shawn Ryan?

  That's why they call the CIA, the clowns in action.

• 1:16:01Speaker 05

  Oh, that's funny.

• 1:16:03Shawn Ryan?

  But, but, so, so, but, so where I'm going with this is if you were starting from the beginning, if you're starting as a, a guy coming up who's just interested in the biker gangs, I guess maybe you don't have to know the culture because you'll learn it along the journey.

• 1:16:19Speaker 05

  And so what you kinda wanna do is like, I see how you, like, I, like, what I told like this guy, Paul Jensen, that was one of the henchmen up in Rockford. I said, man, I see how you guys roll and how you guys act. Man, I'd love to be a part of this, bro. I said, I, but, you know, I always, John Mazzola said, never play a badass, never play a tough guy. He goes, just play the chooch, because you're a guy looking for answers, trying to figure it out. So I was like, okay. So I would tell Paul Jensen, I said, man, I love riding Harleys, I love the club life, I think that's for me. And he's like, all right, man. He goes, if you're interested, he goes, you know, just start coming around. And I'm like, okay. And so he would give me to like the protocol of meeting somebody.

• 1:17:01Speaker 05

  Like, you shake your hand, you know, I'm Chris, Rockford, hang around, hang around Rockford. You know, there's a way to meet these guys. Never touch the patch. Um, don't fight with the brothers. You're gonna get a beat down. You know, that kind of thing. So there was like that protocol, the nuances of, of being in a club. And so he was, you know, he was very good about just, you know, kind of teaching me the ropes. Um, the other ones, like for the outlaws before, I was just a friend of a guy that knew him. So again, they didn't know me farther than a handshake. So it was not that hard, but it wasn't an infiltration. And, you know, it's kind of funny, we always talk about, like, is it worth taking the time to infiltrate? Or can you figure out a different way to get these guys? And a lot of times,

• 1:17:46Speaker 05

  figuring out the other way is a lot safer and a lot expedient. You might not get the same bag for the buck, but you're taking off the head of the snake. So let's just do it this way. It's a little bit easier. So infiltration always isn't there. Getting a patch is, that's not the goal. The goal is to make the case. You know, if you, at the end of the day, you don't say you got a patch, but nobody went to jail. You're wasting your time. So if you're working toward, you know, collecting evidence and buying dope and buying guns and showing their criminal activity, that's one thing. But if you're just doing it for the sake of doing it, it's not worth it. A lot of guys have done cases on Vikings where they never became a member. They just were able to. To befriend these guys and some guys that say, why don't you, you know, why don't you put your toe in the water, man? Why don't you say, ah, I got my own thing going on. I'm okay.

• 1:18:29Speaker 05

  And they were able to go through and do quite a few people. So, you know, it's not always the infiltration that really gets it and wins the game at the end. Sometimes it's just being smart about the number of people you have, how much, you know, money ATF's gonna have, the time that's gonna be expended to do this. Is it worth it? And so, a lot of times, I did a better case that, if you want to talk about, we can talk about too, is a different bike gang. But they did a historical case for, it's the Grim Reapers. They were a Midwest club. I did right after the henchmen. Midwest club, about maybe 500 members, 400 members. They were in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

• 1:19:11Speaker 05

  Kind of white supremacist kind of orientation. They had those ties with, you know, like the Klan guys, that kind of thing. But they did a historical case on them where they went back and identified all the violent acts these guys had done, bar beatings, rape, home invasions, stealing motorcycles. They had really put together this historical case that was awesome. So when I got to the point where I was doing the undercover part and got introduced, all I had to do was get conversation about a lot of these acts that they had already proven up. And now I have bought in a small amount of dope from a guy. Well, that makes all the historical dope they could put on them good. So it made it a lot easier. It's a way better way to do those kinds of organizations. So you got the historical case with all the

• 1:19:53Speaker 05

  components. And then I would go back now as a fresh face. I say, man, I heard you guys. That guy you dropped in the bar that night, went out, flipped him off and stole his Hardy? I go, man, I was, you go, yeah, we beat his ass. Fuck, he was unconscious. We went out and then we stripped it down. You know, the triple tree and the rest of the parts went in the river. And then we sold everything to the outlaws in Joliet. They were aligned with the outlaws in Joliet. So you get that conversation now and it makes all that historical case that they've done that you may have shitty witnesses about. It makes it really good because now you got that actual confession and evidence about that crime. You've stroked a lot of egos. I've told a lot of guys, man, you're the shit.

• 1:20:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, so that's what it's about. But you don't want to be a punk either, because then they don't want you around. So there's that balance of like, man, I respect how you take care of business. You have to do it in a, like a macho, you know, not macho, but kind of a manly kind of, man, I respect what you guys do, man, you know. I respect how you guys handled that.

• 1:20:51Shawn Ryan?

  Man. Embedding is a hell of a lot more complicated than just being undercover for a couple of fucking days.

• 1:20:58Speaker 05

  It's weird. You know, it's weird, but it's also, it's like, um, it's like being on a wrestling or the boxing team. You know, you're on a team, but it's up to you individually to go out and friggin whip a game and put these guys in jail. And so it's like, you got a whole team around you, but it's up to you. You're kind of a solo act. It wasn't until like, probably 2000, where we started working together in groups. We'd have three UCs go and do a deal. And, man, that was like, I was like, this is awesome now.

• 1:21:27Shawn Ryan?

  You like that better than being on your own?

• 1:21:29Speaker 05

  I'd, I'd, I liked being on my own because then I had only myself to be responsible for. But when you got guys that are of such a high caliber, and I watched them, how they work and the stuff that would come out of their mouth and how they knew where I was thinking. And we would play off each other all the, it's just, it's like an orchestra, man. I mean, I'd be saying one thing and this guy would help bolster it by saying some stu-, you know, it just was that ebb and flow of these guys and their, their ability to really, um, really talk to people and, and get information out of them. And it was, um, and it was fun. And not only that, your security's a lot better too. Now you got a guy, you don't have to turn around, you know? You can, you know, I know there's a guy, he's got my back.

• 1:22:13Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. How often would you be having to report back or check in or be affiliated with ATF when you're embedded in an operation?

• 1:22:24Speaker 05

  Every day.

• 1:22:25Shawn Ryan?

  Every day?

• 1:22:26Speaker 05

  Every day. What I would do for the Henchman case, I'd get up, um, man, I was up out of the house by like 4:00 AM. I would go to the office, get the report stuff handled. I would sit down with the secretary. I'd give her, uh, this is what happened last night. These are recordings I have. She would take care of putting that stuff. Or I would put it in evidence, but she would document the evidence sheet, put it in. We'd write a quick brief. We'd do a report. And then by nine o'clock, I was back in the mix. I would, I would be back with those guys doing stuff. I always played it where I lived a distance away that gave me time. If there was something that I needed to either get more people,

• 1:23:07Speaker 05

  something bad had happened, or just guy, bad guys are lazy by nature. They're not gonna wanna make a trip all the way 40 minutes to, you know, come check me or stop by for a beer or something like that. So the times even being embedded, I was able to remove myself to the point where you could live a little bit of life. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. With the henchmen, I didn't know enough by the time I had joined the Grim Reapers. Um, which was kind of interesting. We faked a, to get in, back up a little bit, to get an informant to get into the Grim Reapers. They arrested a guy, a three-time convicted felon, a guy named Crazy. Um, so they arrest Crazy for having a pistol in his pants. Well,

• 1:23:48Speaker 05

  the Club Brothers did not put any money on his books and he sat in the federal lockup for three months with nothing. So at that three-month point, he called up ATF. He said, I wanna cooperate. I'm looking at a lot of years. Um, he goes, um, I wanna do the right thing. So they went out and interviewed him. So the bikers know that if you're in jail and you're looking at 15 years and there's no bond, there's no way, if you all of a sudden, oh, this miraculous thing happened and now I'm out and, and I'm back. You know, bring me back to the club. They're not gonna buy it and they're gonna kinda kick you to the curb. So we had to do something that they thought, this goes to the street theater part.

• 1:24:31Speaker 05

  They thought something that they were watching was really happening and in reality it wasn't. So they made a deal with Crazy and Crazy's attorney. We got approval from DOJ to do it. And they said, look, we'll dismiss the charges on you for now with prejudice, but.

• 1:24:46Speaker 05

  You're gonna have to do introduce a guy. You're gonna have to give us all the historical stuff on the grim reapers that you know, all the drug dealing, all the stuff you've done. You know, you gotta be completely honest about it. And if it works out and we're able to secure convictions at the end of this and you do your part of it, um, then we will re-indict you maybe for a lesser charge. You know, and that's kind of the ebb and flow of the criminal justice system. If you cooperate, then you get some kind of benefit for it. So we didn't want to go into court. We're gonna have to go into court and dismiss the charges. So he had a court date and all the brothers came in to see what was going on. So the judge and the attorney knew and it was already, yeah, we were just basically going to drop the case.

• 1:25:29Speaker 05

  So the case agent and the US attorney start getting in an argument, um, fake argument. And the US attorney looks at the case agent and he goes, well, I'm gonna have to dismiss all the fucking charges. He goes, you motherfuckers. So he goes, Judge, because government, you know, right now we're gonna withdraw with prejudice charges against Mr. I forget whatever his name was. And then judge is like, defense counsel got anything? And they're like, nope, we're all good. And he's there, bangs a gavel and he goes, case dismissed. So the US attorney watch around and now he's tearing into the agent, fake of course. So all the guys in the gallery see this go on.

• 1:26:07Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:26:07Speaker 05

  So when crazy comes out, they're like, fuck, great. This is awesome. So about a month later, he introduces me as his nephew and now I'm off to the races.

• 1:26:18Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, that shit. So the fucking attorneys, the everybody could be in on it.

• 1:26:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was like illegal. There was nothing wrong with it. It was just that they got in this fake argument in the middle of the courtroom. You know, the judge was like, the judge was like, okay with it. He was like, fine. And again, this isn't shit like this with the government does not happen in a vacuum. You gotta run that shit up the chain. You know, and everybody's like, yeah, there's no problem. You're just dismissing the case with prejudice, no big deal. You were gonna do that anyway for his cooperation, so you're good. So that's what, uh, that's what we did. And then I got introduced and then for the next 15 months after I got done with the mail stuff, when they said no more of that, I rolled into that and then became a hang around and a prospect and then. You know, we didn't plan on that to begin with. They were like, do you think you could get on these guys?

• 1:27:02Speaker 05

  I go, I think I'm okay. I went out and I bought like a stolen Harley off the president of the Iowa chapter, like first night out, loaded in the back of my pickup truck. And I go, I think I'm okay. And they were like, all right, man, let's go. So I was like back in it again. So.

• 1:27:19Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, the reason I was asking how often you have to check in is, is I mean, how many guys have you seen? Or maybe, maybe none. But how many, how many guys lose themselves when they're embedded in a, the Italian mob? And the biker gangs and the, and the.

• 1:27:35Speaker 05

  You know.

• 1:27:35Shawn Ryan?

  Intercity gangs.

• 1:27:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a little bit, I think.

• 1:27:38Shawn Ryan?

  Cause it's an attractive lifestyle. It's fucking exciting. There's women, there's drugs, there's booze, there's fights. Like anybody that's, uh, I don't know.

• 1:27:47Speaker 05

  Got a little testosterone.

• 1:27:48Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking man. Um, that shit's attractive. There's a lot of power, a lot of ego, a lot of women, a lot of like, it's just a.

• 1:27:57Speaker 05

  It's true.

• 1:27:58Shawn Ryan?

  You're doing gangster shit.

• 1:28:00Speaker 05

  Yeah. And some of the guys, you actually, you're like, I like that guy. Like if that guy wasn't a criminal right now, we'd probably be friends. Because he's actually a personal guy. His choices in life, though, he's gone to the left here and he's doing what he's doing. Um, so yeah, so you had that. And I think that's just the nature of, you try to look for the best in people. I mean, sometimes, I mean, the way I was brought up, you know, everybody gets, you know, you, you know, you just kind of look for the best in people. You know, when you try some way to communicate with them or get on their level. And it's just that interpersonal communication stuff that lends itself to having feelings for or losing yourself. We've had guys, we had one guy that, it's his story to tell and I won't, I won't tell it. But, um, yeah, he had a problem as he's doing. He goes, I like these guys more than I like my agents in my office.

• 1:28:45Speaker 05

  And well, that's a problem. I remember talking to him and, um, I'm like, bro, what do you? You wear a white hat, that's a black hat. I go, there's a lot of gray area in between, but at the end of the day, you're the police. And he was having, he was struggled. He goes, yeah, but these guys are about brotherhood and this stuff. I go, if these guys know who you are, they will kill you. I said, if they had the opportunity to slit your fucking throat right now, they would fucking kill you. Where's the brotherhood in that? He's like, whoa. So, a lot of guys do. They have, they have an issue or they run into problems with it. Have you ever had that issue? I was pretty much knew where I was at. There were guys I liked. I felt bad, like when Monty Mathias got murdered by the outlaws up there when we were at his funeral. I was

• 1:29:29Speaker 05

  actually, I had to guard the clubhouse at the time, but I felt, I felt bad. I was angry. I was mad. You know, I'll put Monty in jail for the stuff he was doing, but yeah, you know, he believed my story, you know, and he was always looking out. He always looked out, you know, he goes, man, you guys aren't paying enough attention. They're trying to get us. You know, he would tell, be informing myself, man, are you checking your shit for bombs? Are you strapped every fucking day you come out of the house? You need to move closer because we were, like I said, we were way, you know, thirty-five, forty minutes away. He goes, you should probably move closer in town. We have a problem. We need everybody together. You know, I'm like, I will think about it. But yeah, so it's like a guy like that, he's looking out for me. But he's looking out for me because he believes I'm a freaking

• 1:30:11Speaker 05

  criminal. He's not looking out for me because he loves Chris Bayless. You know what I mean? So there's that. You gotta kind of figure that, that component of it out. And it's hard. A lot of people struggle with that.

• 1:30:21Shawn Ryan?

  I would imagine. I would imagine. I mean, I mean, I would imagine that depending on how much time you're spending with these guys and you get attached to them. And I mean, I've seen lots of, say, case officers get attached to fucking assets and it's

• 1:30:37Speaker 05

  Tale as old as time.

• 1:30:38Shawn Ryan?

  wreck when they get killed. And but anyways, but you're, you're in a, you are in a brotherhood. You're in a, you're in a full-blown criminal operation.

• 1:30:49Shawn Ryan?

  And I would imagine, and you like a lot of these, or maybe you like some of these people. I would imagine the lifestyles at least interesting to you.

• 1:30:59Speaker 05

  There's no doubt. It's crazy. I mean, it's, yeah.

• 1:31:01Shawn Ryan?

  And so with that comes maybe a shift in values. I mean, anywhere you, I joined the SEAL teams. I've got all kinds of fucking bad habits from the SEAL teams. Bar fighting, womanizing, boozing, all that shit. You know what I mean? And, and it became a part of who I be, it became a part of who I am for a long time.

• 1:31:20Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:31:21Shawn Ryan?

  Till I was able to kick that shit.

• 1:31:22Speaker 05

  I, you know what? I think a guy told me one time, I was looking at when I retired, I thought maybe, I had talked to a guy that was in defense intelligence and um,

• 1:31:32Speaker 05

  he was like, we were just, just talking about undercover work, being in different places, doing stuff. And I was like, man, you guys, that'd be a fun gig. You know, where you guys are at and the stuff you guys are doing. And he's like, yeah, he goes, if you have a sliding scale of morality sometimes. And I was like, that's, I get it. I was like, you're right. You know, we had that, those morals, those things we were brought up with. But now I gotta be with guys and act like this is something, I love the fact that you're beating the snot out of your girlfriend. I love the fact, fuck her, you know, what does she know? She disrespected you. Fuck you. You gotta give her a knot in the head. You know, it's that kind of like, I don't believe that. But yet, I'm telling my brother right on.

• 1:32:15Speaker 05

  We had a guy, um, Paul Jensen had, he, he had like a little pal, he used to like whip his girlfriends. And uh, so he had this little whip. So my now wife at the time was um, an agent also.

• 1:32:32Speaker 05

  And she was my under, she was my girlfriend, played my girlfriend. And like we're talking outside, she's a terrible undercover agent. She's like the worst. I was like, you are like, she's like, I know, I know, just shut up. And I'm like, okay. So we had gotten this script. And I told her, this is, I go, they are going to get you into, the O L A are gonna get you a room. They're gonna ask you some questions. It's not like, oh, hey, welcome. You know, the butt cakes over here, you get a cup of coffee and everything. I go, they're gonna go in, they're gonna ask you some shit. She's like, all right, so I come up with this script. We practiced it for like six weeks or a month. Yeah, just every day I'm asking her questions, question, question. So I get to the clubhouse and they're like, cause they're kind of like, why are you not with some chick?

• 1:33:16Speaker 05

  There's a million hookers and a million strippers that everybody here is banging. Why are you not participating? I was like, well, I got this chick. She's a good earner, you know, takes care of my shit, you know? And they're like, well, you know, we never see her. I'm like, all right. So I talked her into like, okay, just, I just need cameo appearances on some runs and some shit. She's like, all right, I'll do it. So we get the script down. First time we're at the clubhouse, there's like three, maybe four of the guys, old lady's girlfriends that are there. So I walk in, make the introductions and everything and the girls are like, Tina, good, come with us. They go upstairs in our clubhouse. She's up there like hour and a half, you know, close to two hours.

• 1:34:00Speaker 05

  And I'm like outside and I'm like, fuck, you know, sitting in, we had a fenced in area where all the bikes are parked. We're out there just having a beer. And I see her come back out around a corner and I could see she's got like a little bit of a tear in her eye. And so the brothers were kind of walking around a different way. So I had a one-on-one sex with her. Like I looked at her like, are we cool? And she goes, I don't think they believe me. And I'm like, okay, I said, all right. I go, go stand over by the bike. So I'm kind of trying to catch the vibe because these guys can be telling you, hey, everything's great. And then, you know, and I was like, check the vibe.

• 1:34:42Speaker 05

  So she was kind of standing outside. I used to get some of the shit out of saddlebag or make like you're fucking around over there. So she's at the bike doing something. So I go back inside and um, two of the old ladies there and I was like, I go, I go, hey, we're getting ready to run, you know, see you guys later on or something. And they were like, we really like her. I'm like, are you sure? Cause I'm thinking about dumping her. And they're like, no, we, I go, guys, seriously? I go, this is like a frigging today thing. I go, I don't, they're like, nah, she's, we like her. I go, are you sure? Because if you don't, just tell me, because I'm thinking about dumping her anyway. And they're like, no, no, we kinda like her. I'm like, okay. So I go back outside, we get on the bike, go back to the undercover. I go, I guess you did okay.

• 1:35:23Speaker 05

  And she's like, they were asking me about this. They're asking me about that. There's shit that you gave me. They were asking about, you didn't give me that shit to tell them. She goes, I had to make it up. I said, well, hopefully you did a good job. What lies did you tell them so that we can mark down? So you and I are together on our lies. And she's like, all right, fine. So we're at the undercover part and we had to go back and redo, like not redo, but just, okay. Exactly. What did you say? Exactly. You know, it was about her background. Where are you from? You know, where do you work now? What's your phone number? How long have you known Chris? How long have you guys been dating? You know, your boots look really fucking new. She, you know, like all of a sudden she's a biker chick, you know, where you've got these worn girls that have got some stuff that's got some road miles on it.

• 1:36:06Speaker 05

  Tina shows up in all new shit with the price tag still on it, you know? I was like, that's not gonna fly. So, but she did fine on that part. It was great. The other problem was a couple of months later,

• 1:36:19Speaker 05

  Paul's got that paddle that he liked to whip his girls with. He had this little paddle and Tina was standing in front of me. And Paul goes, give Tina a little whack on the ass. And I'm like, ah. So she's talking to another old lady. So I kinda go forward. I gave her like a shot on the butt with this little leather whip thing with a paddle on it. Well, she spins around, man, bam, and she blasts me right in the chest. And then she realizes I shouldn't have done that. And I look at her and I hear Paul Jensen go, you should get your cut in line. And I'm like, right on, bro. So I grab her by the hair and I walk over to the side of the clubhouse. I go, sweetie, you can't punch me in front of these guys.

• 1:37:01Speaker 05

  I go, it's not good. It makes me look bad. She's, I am so, so sorry. I go, okay. I go, I gotta put you on timeout, man. I go, go back and sit on the bike with your arms folded, pouting and just sit there. And she's like, okay. So she goes back, sits on the bike.

• 1:37:16Speaker 05

  So we go in with the rest of the guys, I'm having a beer at the thing. So I'm looking around and they don't, nobody says anything, you know, they're just like, you had to take care of your shit the way you had to take care of your shit. So after a while, I looked at them and I go, you know what, fellas? I go, I think timeout's over, man. I'm gonna go home. I go, I'll catch you guys later tonight. They're like, right on, brother. So I left, I went outside. I was like, baby, you cannot frickin' do that shit. And she goes, I know, I know. But she cannot play that subservient female biker role, you know? I wanted to tell her, I go, start washing the bike or start wiping the gas tank off. But I didn't want to, I said, figure timeout, just sitting in timeout on the back of the scooter would be enough to, that was her pettance for the day. Yeah, man.

• 1:37:58Speaker 05

  But yeah, but she did, um, we were practicing, getting, because we knew the outlaws were trying to get us. So I had a forty-five that I carried in my back, back of my pants and where I'm on the bike. She would practice coming out of my pants if we had to engage while we were riding, which we almost had to at one point. Um, so I, I thought we were all prepared. I thought I was like, I got this shit. I'm in the middle of a biker war. I know what some of these guys look like. I'm fucking gunned up. I got guns over here. I got guns in my pants. I go, I'm on it, man. Somebody steps to me, I'm gonna fucking crush them. I had no idea how much the outlaws knew about where we were at, what we were doing, times they had surveilled us,

• 1:38:43Speaker 05

  times they tried to kill us, where I was oblivious to it until later when I talked to the case agent, Sandy the Vulcanier, who did the Rico on him out of Wisconsin. I was up interviewing these guys and they're like, yeah, remember you? And I was like, fuck. So I thought I was, man, I thought I was king fucking shit, man. Look at me. Fuck, I'm that. The realization of that frickin', it's one of those to your knees experiences where you're like, you know what? I need to fucking reassess. Who else knows? The thought, the fuck I'm doing. Like, how I think of myself. And I gotta, I gotta be better. And so, yeah, you just, you try to be better. Damn. Yeah. Why'd you almost kill somebody on your bike?

• 1:39:25Speaker 05

  Well, actually, the Outlaws almost killed us. We had a two cover or one cover team guy and we were doing a run where, you know, you go out, go to bar to bar, you know, so that the henchmen and we had some out of town angels were there. So we're all lined up getting ready to go. And the Outlaws, and we found this out later because the outlaw that killed Monty Mathias, I interviewed him, he cooperated and gave everything up. Um, when I interviewed him, he talked about, um, I, I asked him about, were you guys in a van one night driving by our pack? And he goes, yeah, he goes, we had a couple ARs, shotguns and pistols. And we were gonna slide the slider over of the van. And he goes, and as your bikes were going this way, we were coming south, you guys headed out of the clubhouse? I go, right.

• 1:40:08Speaker 05

  He goes, yeah, he goes, we were just gonna and just open up on everybody down the line. And I was like, okay, okay. And the reason I knew that was our cover team guy spotted and knew who the president was, that guy Spike, that was driving the van. And so we, we knew they were, we thought they were just following us. I had no idea they were gunned up, ready to fricking unload and kill all of us. And so I'm thinking to myself at that point, like, it wouldn't have mattered if Tina got that 45 out of the back of my pants, we were gonna eat it. There was no way we were gonna be able to survive that. And it's one of those where had they saw our surveillance guy, our surveillance guy saw them, they didn't know if the surveillance guy was one of our guys following the pack that was gunned up

• 1:40:53Speaker 05

  ready to go, or if it was law enforcement that was following the pack. So they called it off and they left. So it was one of those many times where I look back now and I'm like, so fortunate, uh, to not be, not be injured or hurt.

• 1:41:07Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. How long were you guys undercover together?

• 1:41:09Speaker 05

  Um, 15 months, I think.

• 1:41:12Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:41:13Speaker 05

  About a year and a half.

• 1:41:14Shawn Ryan?

  And these guys were all sharing women?

• 1:41:17Speaker 05

  They would, but you had the right to, you had the choice. For, I mean, if your old lady wants to go sleep with so and so, no problem. The angels were more, they're a little bit different in the, in that regard. The Grim Reapers, I would never bring a girl to Grim Reapers. They told me flat out, first chick you bring here, we're fucking her. Like, all right, right on. Good to know. So I had no girlfriend during the year and a half on the Grim Reapers. But at that point, I knew how to play it. Like I said, they had done a historical case. So I didn't have to push to get a lot of guns or everything. I just had to get a lot of conversation for the Rico. And that's what, that's what made that case. And we ended

• 1:41:55Speaker 05

  up with 50 defendants in five states. I think we seized, we seized three clubhouses under that. We were able to show historically, they had purchased 250 keys from the cocaine from the Joliet outlaws that went to them. So we had that drug conspiracy locked down. We could show that they had stolen over a million dollars in Harley Davidson motorcycles over the course of just 12 months. So these guys were, I mean, they were out there doing, doing bad things. And so we were able to do that through the Rico. I think we charged 17 guys on the Rico and the other 38 defendants went on single, like I bought dope or single

• 1:42:37Speaker 05

  gun buys or something along those that and whatever they got caught with during the, during the search warrants that we did on their houses.

• 1:42:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So did you ever have anybody that tried to fuck your partner?

• 1:42:53Speaker 05

  My partner that I'm married to?

• 1:42:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you're, well.

• 1:42:55Speaker 05

  Well, there were guys that were like very, very interested and like, hey, man, you guys, how do you guys get down? We don't get down like that. I go, I'm a sole proprietor, bro. I like, I like my stuff.

• 1:43:09Shawn Ryan?

  And they're good with that?

• 1:43:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, they were fine. Yeah.

• 1:43:12Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Yeah. Well, Chris, let's take a break.

• 1:43:16Speaker 05

  Let's do it.

• 1:43:16Shawn Ryan?

  And when we come back, we'll talk about infiltrating the Hells Angels.

• 1:43:20Speaker 05

  Certainly.

• 1:43:24Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:44:07Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:45:07Shawn Ryan?

  So I think we're getting ready to talk about infiltrating the Hells Angels. Where do we start? Actually, how did you? So was this a tasking or did you decide to do this? Cause at the beginning you kind of said it was, there's a gun, there's the money, go arrest people.

• 1:45:25Speaker 05

  Right, right. It was kind of independent. But what we always knew, there was a case where two Hells henchmen at the time, it was Huntsman when we started. They didn't get their role in their patch to Hells Angels was later on. Two Hells henchmen had actually, they were, we knew they were into a lot of different things. Mel had got locked up on by the FBI for a minute on a car give up, mail fraud. We had information they were, you know, dealing drugs and all about guns.

• 1:45:56Speaker 05

  We also had information in a separate case where two of Mel's guys had done a murder or attempted to kill one of their attorneys that represented him. He hated his wife and didn't want to get divorced, so he thought it'd be a better idea to put a bomb on her car and blow her up. So two of Mel's guys went out and actually put a bomb on her vehicle. It went off. She got injured, but she wasn't killed. Sure. But these guys, it was interesting, criminal masterminds that they were. You got two biker guys, they're in a northwest suburb. She had, she was taking the train into the city. So she was in like a parking area where you get the train. There's coffee

• 1:46:39Speaker 05

  shops there. Well, these guys sat around looking suspicious when they put the bomb on and every suburbanites looking at these two biker guys like they were very recognizable. Obviously, they didn't read that book Left to Bang, where you look for anomalies. You know, they missed that part. So they put the bomb on, she puts it in reverse, backs up, it detonates. She's not killed. And so we knew that from a pretextual or from a standpoint of why would we look at these guys, there were no a lot of different stuff. And so that was the pretext for starting the investigation. I knew from an undercover standpoint, there's no way I could do these guys in Chicago because again, I knew who Mel was and I knew,

• 1:47:23Speaker 05

  we knew, we just grew up in the same area. It was, it was not going to take very long to get found out. So fortunately, a local police officer and a DeKalb County sergeant had developed a CI, a guy nicknamed Grub, and he said, this guy wants to cooperate, thinks he could, you know, do a case on the Rockford Angels or Hells Hatchman. I'm like, all right. So I met him and he's like, we got our story kind of down straight and we knew right away that, you know, I didn't know exactly what we'd have to do to get in. And the intent really wasn't to get in and become a member. It was more just to see if

• 1:48:06Speaker 05

  we could perfect a case on the information we could gather just by being around those guys. But it looked like it was moving toward like an infiltration kind of thing as we started to go. So it became like, okay, well, if we can keep going on this, then let's, let's see how far we could go and get into the internal workings of the, of the club that we wouldn't get if we were just, you know, on the outside superficially. So as we started hanging around, we backstopped ourselves with, uh, the CI was actually a counselor for drug addiction. Um, and so they knew he didn't use or drank. And so it helped me with the drug component because I said, I was with this guy, part of his, I was in his program, and that's how we became friends. He knew my dad, blah, blah, blah. So we had a pretty

• 1:48:49Speaker 05

  solid story. He was a contractor and was a builder. So I would go to construction jobs with him during the day, in and around where we knew some of these guys would be. They'd drive by, they would see us, or as we started to hang around or go to clubhouse or meet them in bars. They're like, what are you guys doing? Well, we're building a house over here. So, you know, they would drive by and they'd see us. And so it added to the credibility of who we were. So that's kind of how we, from a foundational standpoint, we started it off, is started going forward from there.

• 1:49:19Shawn Ryan?

  So your, your whole plan was just be seen first?

• 1:49:22Speaker 05

  Just be seen and see where we can go. You know, it's one of those things you're not going to know unless you try it. Uh, what we were able to do very early on was, um, the henchman had a, one of the members from Chicago had a storage unit. And we had gotten, we'd heard peripherally stuff, just talking about guns and vows like, yeah, we gotta, you know, we got, we got guns. We're ready to go if we have a problem anywhere. We got them stashed. We got them stored. Um, and, uh, some of the guys I worked with in the auto theft task force said, hey, man, we got, we think we got enough probable cause to get into this storage unit. It's, um, it's owned by a, a Hills henchman. Um, they said he's got like an arsenal in there. And I go, well, do you guys got enough PC to

• 1:50:05Speaker 05

  get in without anything we're doing? And they're like, all right, let's talk to the state's attorney and see. So they talked to the state's attorney. They didn't need any of our stuff, any information we had. So they were able to get, it was called a John Doe warrant, which is basically, um, you don't, you're not going to know who's the affiant and gave the probable cause for the warrant until you actually go to court. Then it's revealed. So it kind of kept their, their informant safe for a little while while they, they did this, um, uh, did this search warrant. So when they got in, I went up and it was clove it all up and it was sitting in the back of squad just to see what they would get out of it. And I think we got 150 firearms, 15 machine guns, 10 silencers, hand grenades, 32,000 rounds of ammunition, all assortment,

• 1:50:49Speaker 05

  556, 9, 45, a lot of black powder. What else did we get? I mean, it was just, it was like their arsenal, nice little arsenal. So we were able to take that. So we were able to get that like very early, like maybe the first six weeks, seven weeks that we were doing it, it came really quick. So for ATF, that was a, all right, that's, that's kind of a win. That's a good stash. The, they were all MAC-10 machine pistols that they had, they were converted, great job. The guns were oiled up and they were wrapped in cellophane. They had 200 rounds and they were all in like a little pellet kit in case. So you had the silencer, the MAC-10, 200 rounds of ammo. So you could just grab it,

• 1:51:33Speaker 05

  go if you were going to go do something, take care of it and then either get rid of it or bring it back, whatever you wanted to do. But it was all, it was pretty much, it was ready to go. You know, you come by, you grab it, you go take care of business. So for us, that was like, wow, we kind of hit it pretty good right off the bat. And then it was like, well, let's see what more we can get, more information we can get, more stuff that they're doing. And as we started getting into it, you know, the guys that were dealing dope out of there, we pretty much identified those guys pretty quick. And then we got word that they were going to roll their patch to, you become prospects for the Hells Angels. And the dynamic completely changed. You had guys that, you had 26 members,

• 1:52:17Speaker 05

  I think, maybe up in Rockford. A lot of those guys knew this was not going to end well. That when we make this step and get this Hells Angel patch, you know, we're going to have a problem with the Allahs. They knew it. Um, so a lot of the guys quit. Are you a part of all these conversations? Are you in the club? Yeah, I'm not in the, I'm in the club, but I'm, I'm learning the ways of the force, if you will, through, um, one of the members that kinda, Paul Jensen, that, uh, Paul Jensen eventually stabbed a guy to death and died in the penitentiary. But Paul was my guy that like, he was helping me along. So even though I wasn't supposed to be party to meetings and stuff, you know, I'd ask him, I'd say, brother, what's going on, man? I gotta know, you know? I mean, I,

• 1:53:00Speaker 05

  I got a business, um, you know, I'm still trying to eat, wanna be with you guys. Should I gun up all the time? He goes, you better gun up every freaking day, man. I'm like, okay, all right, enough said. Um, and then he would just give me tips and clues as to like, hey, they're coming in, a bunch of guys are gonna quit, they rolled their shit up, they left it on the pool table, and they're not, they're not gonna be a part of the club anymore. And so I think they were down to like, maybe eight guys. Um, actually were the remaining crew of, of Rockford from about 26. So a lot of those guys said, yeah, you know, we're about knuckling and, you know, being crazy bikers, but we're not down for what's gonna happen. And they, they knew, they knew that it was gonna be bad. And so

• 1:53:40Speaker 05

  that's when, I think it helped us a bit, I think I mentioned before, that because they were so focused on doing the right thing by the Hells Angels, and the Angels would come in and give them called on the job training, you know, coming in, this is what we expect from you guys, this is what we wanna see from you guys, here's how you handle it. It was more like platitudes of when you met somebody, you know, this is how we wanna be respected, this is how we wanna be seen in the community. Um, the henchmen were like into themselves, didn't talk to anybody outside the bike club. The Angels were like, no way, man. He goes, you gotta, it's a public relations thing. He goes, you want people in the community to think, yeah, that guy's not a bad guy. They take care of their neighborhood, the clubhouse, they help us out, they're good guys. Cause you know, at the end of the day, we might be in court, we might be, you know, they might have these

• 1:54:23Speaker 05

  guys sitting on a jury, and we want those jury pool from that area to say, you know what, those guys aren't really that bad. So it was kind of a PR kind of thing. So we started having what was called, uh, Tuesday night runs. And it was where they just invite people in that were just riders, just regular citizens, they called them. They'd make a little money by selling drinks at the bar, um, and then we'd have a poker run, you know, you go out, go bar to bar. It was a way to kind of, um, Get people interested. Maybe they got, you know, there's a couple of guys we want that look like they'd be hardcore guys that could come with us and maybe kind of groom those guys and see if they'd be around. So it was kind of like, uh, kind of an open house kind of thing for the biker world. So a lot of people would show up. Um, one of the people

• 1:55:08Speaker 05

  we, that showed up initially was a club called ARM, Association of Recovered Motorcyclists. It was supposed to be a, a sober club, no drugs, no alcohol, just live in the biker lifestyle, you know, live free or die kind of, kind of thought process. So those guys come in. What we did know was those guys were aligned with the outlaws. And so when they came in, all they were doing was taking notes and gathering intel, then to give to the outlaws up in Janesville, Wisconsin that ended up, the bombings, they picked out the targets, that kind of thing. So, um, I remember the president coming up to me, you know, he put his arm around me and he's like, so you're throwing your hat in here, huh? I said, yeah,

• 1:55:51Speaker 05

  right on, you know? He goes, yeah, this is a good, this is a good group, man. You're gonna be just fine hanging out with these guys. And now this motherfucker went, told the outlaws where everybody lived, you know, and they came back and they used his information against everybody in the club. Shit. Yeah.

• 1:56:08Speaker 05

  What did you think of the lifestyle? You know, those guys. You enjoying it? Um, it was pretty, I'm not gonna lie, there's an adrenaline rush you get doing shit. Um, like I said, like on that sizzle reel, man, when you're in a pack of, you know, 20 or 30 guys, and you're rolling down the highway and you see that angel patch and the hatchment patch, you're like, nobody's gonna fuck with us. And if they do, it's gonna be odd. It's like that, that level, that thought of invincibility, if you will, that I'm riding with some guys that are gonna get after it. Um, and so there was, there's like, there's an allure to that. Like he's talked about, man, if, if you got a little bit of testosterone and some gumption,

• 1:56:51Speaker 05

  it's like, man, this is kind of, we're badass. Um. And it was kind of that mentality that that those guys had and some of them were very badass. Extremely badass and some of them weren't. What do you mean by that? Well, there's guys that would get down, get down like they call it on the street like there's guys that get down. But you want a guy that gets down, get down like a guy that will take it, a guy that's going to murder somebody like Paul Jensen stabbing a guy outside the bar. Paul was a guy that would get down, get down, which had other guys, maybe they sell dope, but they're still in the club, but they weren't. You know, they're down for the cause because at the end of the day, if we all decide we're against the outlaws. Then everybody's in, there's no like, well, you know what? I'm going to take this day off. No. We're at war with the outlaws. You're going to go out. You see an outlaw, you're going to kill them. It was a segue for the outlaws.

• 1:57:35Speaker 05

  And if you didn't do that, you're going to get your ass beat or worse and you're going to get tossed out of the club. So that's you're in for a penny in for a pound and that that helps us with the Rico. Because there's a part of the Rico. When we identify the enterprise, it's called the Pinkerton Rule. It's Pinkerton Rule basically says, actions and statements of one co-conspirator are the actions and statements of all. So if you and your crew and I, we decide. We're going to deal dope and we're at war with this other drug faction. And one of our guys out of the crew, we had the agreement and that's what you do is the agreement to do something. So and that's the conspiracy component.

• 1:58:16Speaker 05

  As soon as we agree to do that, then if you went out and got popped off with 50 bricks. It could come back and we could all get charged with that same drug amount. If you decide I need to kill a rival drug dealer and we've all agreed at some point, we're going to have to kill a rival drug dealer and you do it. We all get hung with that. So it's it's kind of a, and that's a very simplistic way to do it. It's a little more nuanced when you get into court, but. Ultimately, that's basically it in a nutshell. So and that's why Rico is such a valuable tool. It's because you get a lot of guys at the top that'll order something and the underling will go do it. We all have the agreement that we need to go kill this guy. We send a guy out to go kill him. Generally, that guy, if he gets caught, will just get charged independently of that murder.

• 1:58:58Speaker 05

  But what RICO allows us to do is to go back then and take the entire enterprise down. Because those are the actions and furtherance of the enterprise these guys are doing. And so it's like a mosaic of criminal activity. You know, you've got a lot of little incidents, but they paint a large picture of the totality of the criminal actions of a particular group. And so that's what RICO does.

• 1:59:23Shawn Ryan?

  Got you.

• 1:59:23Speaker 05

  And that's why we use it. But it's not something that's in a bubble. Ricos just don't, like, hey, I'm gonna put a RICO and we're gonna charge it tomorrow. There's levels of review that go through that. Because it's such a great tool, they don't want it to ever be, you know, we don't want there any bad case law or anything bad said about it. So to do a RICO, you've got a, it's called a prosecutional memo, and it starts at the first level. Prosecutor goes up to his boss, crim chief, US attorney. And then for RICO, that goes off to OEO, Office of Enforcement Operations. Enforcement Operations, that's what it is. They have a RICO team up there of attorneys. They review it to make sure you've got everything right. And then it goes back and you got the okay to do it.

• 2:00:08Speaker 05

  So it's kind of volumous, takes some time to put, it takes a lot of time to put together, but it's well worth it because you get to just bring in a ton of criminal activity that you wouldn't necessarily be able to do in a normal case.

• 2:00:22Shawn Ryan?

  Roger that. What are you partaking in? Are you selling drugs? Are you selling guns? Are you sleeping around? Are you using drugs?

• 2:00:30Speaker 05

  I, we did.

• 2:00:32Shawn Ryan?

  Heavy drinking?

• 2:00:32Speaker 05

  We did some street theater with Paul Jensen. And once I did it with Paul, hired him to watch something, and gave him some money, and then left it alone and didn't say anything about it. He goes, so you got a, he goes, you got a bad self and a not-so-bad self, huh? And I go, well, you know how it is, you gotta eat. And I wouldn't say anything about what it was about. But he knew that obviously it was something, so he would vouch for me then, for the most part, you know, for the rest of the time. Like I said, there was other guys in there that were like, something about dude, you know, something ain't right with them. And you're never gonna win those guys over, you just gotta figure out a way around them. So I would do that. And then, like I said, I did enough in front of Paul. And at that time, again, they were so focused on.

• 2:01:18Speaker 05

  Being, getting that patch, that Hells Angel patch and rolling it over and not fucking that up and having the angels say, no, we don't want you guys. They were so focused on that, they pretty much weren't paying attention to what we were doing or not doing. The fact that we were there, uh, in and of itself was enough. Those guys, all right, you know, we'll let you guys come along. Wow. Yeah. So we were. Are you, are you partying? Are you? Oh, yeah. We were at the clubhouse, ten in bar. I do security during the meetings. You know, I got a two-way radio. Um. Drugs? I didn't do any. I didn't have to do any. No shit? Yeah, I told him in the beginning. I, there was one guy that, one guy that would constantly push me, um, Al. He said, brother, I just can't trust you to, unless he, I go, bro, I go, I already told him, man. I've been down this road, bro. I go, if you want me

• 2:02:03Speaker 05

  to be like Dennis, which was another guy that was just drunk all the time, he always, he'd come in the clubhouse and say, I'm, um, financially embarrassed. Cause he was just friggin' broke. I said, if you want Dennis, I go, then put that shit in my nose. And you know what? I'll be Dennis. But right now I got a thousand dollars in my fucking pocket. So do you want a earner? You want a guy that's gonna make money and make us look good as a club? Or do you want a drunk at the end of the bar? I go, choice is yours, bro. And he was like, oh, no, man. I'm just saying. I go, bro, I just, I can't. So that's where I'm at. I go, if I gotta do that to be with you guys, I can't be with you guys. And they were like, okay. They bought that? They did.

• 2:02:40Speaker 05

  That's surprising. It is. I think they'd like the fact that we had a business. And I think some of the guys looked at is if you have a legit business, like Mel had, you know, Mel worked for companies, you know, where he was no show, you know, but he got a paycheck and he got insurance. And it was just companies that I think in, you know, his ability to use those proceeds, you know, drug proceeds and then pay that company for his healthcare and stuff like that. Um, so they looked at our having a business, what they thought was a legitimate business. And the CI did have, the informant had a legitimate business. They kinda looked at that as probably a plus. On a sub level, we'll be able to leverage that, you know, at the end of this, when we get our full patch. So they, they kinda

• 2:03:23Speaker 05

  looked at us like that, um, where, yeah, okay. And then we, you know, there were times in bars where.

• 2:03:31Speaker 05

  Somebody'd mouth off or something, you know, and then they're like, hey, man, step to that guy and tell him what time of day it is, you know, but right on, bro. So I go step to the guy and I would tell him basically, brother, I said, man, you don't want how this is gonna go. I go, it's not me. I go, it's them and you know it. And he'd be like, most of the time those guys would just say, okay. You know, and they, they walk away, but I think they wanted me to go up and slug them in the face. And I come back and they're like, why didn't you knock that guy out? And I was like, well, first of all, I'm a little fucking dude. And it was a pretty big cat. So I just told him what time of day it was. I told him I'd get him some time when he wasn't looking. And they're like, all right, right on, hang around. I go, do you want me to just get locked up for doing something stupid?

• 2:04:12Speaker 05

  I thought we were smarter than that. So when they tried to do things to test, I'd be like, I'll do it. I'll find a way to do it, but I'm not telling you when I do it and I'll do it on my own. Because they had a motto, three can keep a secret if two are dead. And I'm like, that's the motto, man. So I'll hang it. You won't see that guy anymore, but I'll take care of it, but I'm not gonna tell you guys. It'll just be what it is. And they were like, so having that air of mystery a little bit on how you handle your business, it went a long way. And like I said, they were so concerned with being Hell's Angels at that point in time. They kind of, that's the normal stuff they probably would have did to really check our shit. They weren't, they weren't really doing. So we're unfortunate.

• 2:04:52Shawn Ryan?

  So I mean, you're just talking about, you know, do you want an earner or do you want a drunk? And, you know, I'm interviewing Mel yesterday. I interviewed George Christie. I haven't released it yet a couple of months ago. You know, and I'm, I'm asking these guys, how is the club making any fucking money? I don't understand, I don't know if they're just not telling me, cause it's, you know what I mean? They still feel some allegiance to it, but I don't understand what the point of the club is. If everybody's doing, you know, yesterday Mel kind of described it, just say, everybody does their own shit. They, they deal their own drugs. They do their own, run women, whatever guns, whatever it is, but it's not affiliated with the club.

• 2:05:33Shawn Ryan?

  And so if the only way the club is making money is paying fucking dues and.

• 2:05:39Speaker 05

  It's the underground aspect of what they're doing with the drug dealing. So you've got interconnected drug dealers like, um.

• 2:05:49Speaker 05

  SoCal or Southern California guys will be dealing with and selling meth to Midwest guys. And they, the fact that you're both Hells Angels, there's a certain level of one safety that you're not going to get robbed on the deal, although I think it did happen at one point. I think somebody didn't pay for dope or something and it was quite a riff within the Hells Angels about it. But everything they do is like, it's, it's involved, but it's not involved. So they know how Rico works. Like there's other clubs and one club that was like, if you sell an ounce of cocaine, you pay a hundred dollars to the club. So they were, you know, it's almost like you checked every Rico, you know, the money laundering component of it and said, okay, you know, the organization itself is putting a price

• 2:06:33Speaker 05

  on the amount of drugs that you're selling. And so it, that is easier to prove. The way they get around doing is we're all independent operators. We're all doing shit on our own, but they pay dues to the club. They go on runs, they buy their Harleys, you know, all that stuff is the proceeds of their legal activity to be in the club. And the club's as much about persona and badass and we're the number one guys than it is about anything else. No shit? Yeah. There's guys making tons of money. We stopped one of the Chicago Hells Angels with a million dollars cash in Las Vegas. That he was getting ready to go, I think he was going to try to launder it through, you

• 2:07:16Speaker 05

  know, gambling, small amounts of gambling and then get the receipts. But we got one of those guys and it was later, it wasn't when I was involved and in fact it was when Mel was out of the club, but that was one of their guys. Got, and another guy got stopped with a trapped car with a bunch of money in a truck going to Mexico to pick up. So those guys were, they're in the game and they're in the game in a, in a large way. Not all of them are at that level, but there's a lot of them that are. And they use that Hells Angel, that mystique about who they are, because if, it's like Charles Schwab. All right. So if you're going to invest with Charles Schwab or Joe Blow, the ragman, you know, at the end of the day, it's like, I'm going to go to Charles Schwab because he's got the name and the reputation and he's badass and he's going to get it done.

• 2:08:01Speaker 05

  And that's kind of how the Hells Angels looked at it. You know, it's the same way. We're kind of the Charles, we're the number one guys and they use that, they use that.

• 2:08:11Speaker 05

  That persona, that sticker to basically say, you know, when we do business, the Hells Angels logo comes with it. So what do we do? There's some Hells Angel affiliation with it. It's like when Mel beat the guy up and um, uh, for disrespecting his girlfriend. You know, he invokes the Hells Angels, you know, he tells them inside, do you know who the fuck I am? And that guy's like, yeah, he goes, I'm the fucking Hells Angel president. He goes, my crew will crush your crew. So now he's using, again, the Hells Angel logo, the Hells Angel.

• 2:08:43Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 2:08:43Speaker 05

  Their mystique, you know, in this particular situation.

• 2:08:47Shawn Ryan?

  So it is a an enterprise that they use to influence their personal operations.

• 2:08:58Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 2:09:00Shawn Ryan?

  And they all get to use that enterprise.

• 2:09:02Speaker 05

  Correct. When you come in and someone says, this guy is a weapon specialist in the Navy, that's his MOS, he's a, or what they, I forget what it was called. Weapon specialist, and this guy's a Navy SEAL. There's going to be a certain amount of what do you think about this guy based on the fact that he's a, you know, weapons officer. There's a certain thing you're going to think about this guy because he's a Navy SEAL. And that Navy SEAL stuff may write on the coattails of, you know, you or Jason Redmond or one of these other guys that they know about. So they know what they get. So they expect the same thing out of you guys or out of this other guy that you just met that's a Navy SEAL.

• 2:09:44Speaker 05

  So right away, there's a certain persona that you are certain of. This is who this guy is and what he's about. It's the same way with the Hells Angel patch. You know, there's certain things I expect. One, he's probably a killer. Maybe he's a killer, he's not, but they have a reputation of being a killer. So right away with that reputation comes the ability for me to facilitate my criminal activity and make it better by riding on the fact that I am actually a Hells Angel.

• 2:10:08Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 2:10:09Speaker 05

  That makes, I mean, is that, explaining that, right?

• 2:10:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, makes sense. Is this how, is this how all gangs work or is this just motorcycle?

• 2:10:15Speaker 05

  I think so. I think, I think gangs.

• 2:10:18Shawn Ryan?

  Italian mob, this is.

• 2:10:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a, you know, and there's.

• 2:10:21Shawn Ryan?

  Crips.

• 2:10:21Speaker 05

  There's people that are drawn to that dark side that, you know, man, there's an edge to that. There's girls that are attacked, you know, that, that like that. Guys that are in that mix are, you know, they're dangerous. You're, damn, I'm on the edge. I'm a criminal. I'm out there frigging, you know, doing shit you don't know about because I'm a mystery. So there's a lot of that that goes on in the criminal. I think for street gangs, a lot of times, street gangs are the result of I need to live in this community and if I don't join this gang, I'm either with them or I'm against them. So it might be easier to me to be with them. So not that there's not, you know, guys that actively, I mean, we've done some great street gang

• 2:11:00Speaker 05

  cases, but those guys are just homicidal. I mean, just absolutely have no thought of killing somebody. And those are the guys we want to put in jail. So when you have that, I think it goes to that any collection of bad people, I think it's kind of the same MO. Like the Latin Kings think they're it, you know, the gangster disciples are going to disagree. You've got territorial disputes, not only for whether or not it's a drug dealing area or a drug tip, like the Kings are, they're going to be over third and true, and these guys are, want to be over there selling their dope. There's enough dope tips around the city of Chicago to do

• 2:11:41Speaker 05

  that. But this guy might disrespect this guy on Facebook now or Instagram. He might rap about this guy's being a jagoff. Well, now this guy loads a car, you know, full of thugs and they go over and they shoot the guy off his doorstep. So you have a lot of that level of violence. It's no, it's not done for any particular reason other than he disrespected me and now we're going to get him.

• 2:12:06Speaker 05

  Makes sense. How was the patch over?

• 2:12:11Speaker 05

  You got patched then, correct? No, I got, I became a hang around, an official hang around. And then they had done, they killed Monty Mathias at that point, murdered him in his shop. They detonated the car bomb on Grand Avenue. They had blown up the president of the club that I was with. Who else did they kill? They killed another guy. Were you there for, were you there? I was there when Monty got killed. I was there when the bombs went off. Yeah. Can you describe that?

• 2:12:41Speaker 05

  I think the realization of, well, there was two things. One, when I interviewed those guys later, but I had the realization of, man, I better make sure I'm checking my six and that my shit is together. My shit's tight. I remember that. I remember, um, Monty was killed so violently. Did you see it? I didn't see him actually kill him, but I saw the scene later and I saw the pictures. And I interviewed the guy that killed him. So, um,

• 2:13:12Speaker 05

  how he, and I don't say this because, um,

• 2:13:18Speaker 05

  trying to think of how to put this. I appreciated his fight for survival on what he did. Um, the guy that came in shot him three times with a 45. Didn't go down, came around a counter and engaged him, got the gun turned around, squeezed rounds off. Uh, the guy that killed him said, uh, he took me to the ground. We're wrestling on the ground. The gun's empty. I'm hitting him with the gun. Um, Monty got to the back. Monty had a nine millimeter hidden in the back and I think he was trying to get to that.

• 2:13:51Speaker 05

  The guy, uh, the other fouls him back, grabs a chunk of metal that was on a bar or on a workbench and starts crushing his skull with it. Um, I think at that point, as I recall, he said he went to the back and Monty had some locks on the top. He couldn't get out. So he spun around, had to go past Monty. Monty ties him up again and fucking, it's like just saying, fuck you, motherfucker. Fuck you. Um, and that's when he took the screwdriver and, and finished him through the neck with a screwdriver. Um, and it was kinda interest, or kinda interesting. The whole thing, a little surreal. Um, a little, when I was talking to the investigators and they pretty much knew how the,

• 2:14:36Speaker 05

  by the crime scene, they could figure out what happened. Um, you know, I was, I was pissed off, man. I was like, you know, fuck. You know, it was weird because here I am. And try to arrest Monty at some point, if he's involved in things. But on the other hand, I think the level of brutality at his murder, I was like, I was pissed. I was fucking pissed. And it was, it was, it was a strange time. And I was like, I talked to ATF management, came down and they were like, where are we at on this? What do we have right now that we can do? And so, well, we got the gun storage stuff. We've got other information, but we weren't able to get a lot more going because of, in that transitional period with the angels.

• 2:15:20Speaker 05

  I go, we got some small buys off people in the area. Like I'd bought like dope off some other guys, bought, sawed off shotguns off some guys, bought guns. So I'm like, so this is where we have right now. We got a lot of great conversation about the club in general, what we could use in a Rico as far as outlining of the enterprise. So we got good stuff on that. And they're like, look, Chris, with all due respect, man, we can't, we don't think you can, we can cover this, can't cover you enough that we could preclude you from getting smoked. There's a certain amount of risk you take. But now you're, you're in the middle of fucking war between the outlaws and the Hells Angels. In addition to that, you did a bunch of the outlaws already. So they kind of know maybe who you are.

• 2:16:04Speaker 05

  They might recognize, hey, isn't this the same guy that ended up seizing a clubhouse in Joliet? You'll see, you got that problem to worry about. Then you got the problem of what if these guys find out or they think you're actually, you know, all these murders going on, somebody inside is telling them, little did they know it was Arm, that other bike club. They're like, they might think it's you, you know? You're the new guy, who's the new face? You know, all of a sudden, we're all go to jail after somebody sold him dope? That's interesting. So there was a lot of stuff that I didn't want to see at the time. I'm like, no, fuck that. I go, I can stay in there. I still, you know, I had a 45 in the back of my pants. I'm, I'm super fucking cool. And I wasn't, man, not by any stretch. So it was good for them to say no, say we're all done.

• 2:16:48Speaker 05

  And so shortly after Monty got killed, I think it was by the fall, we basically told those guys, the informant, hey, we're out. We're done with right now. You know, it's just, our business is ruined. Everybody's trying to kill us, blah, blah, blah. You know, so we laid it down. So like, you know, you made prospects. You would have been the first Hells Angel prospects in Rockford. And we're like, you know what, bro? It's not about fucking getting a patch. It's about, you know, we left it with, it's about the fucking brotherhood and, you know, that kind of thing. And they were like, all right, but you can't come back. Fair enough. So, fast forward, I, that's when I did the Grim Reaper case for the next 15 months out in the Quad Cities.

• 2:17:30Speaker 05

  We rolled right from that into that next case. And then the informant started to get back in with these guys. We chronicled the violence that they were doing. The informant got kind of back in. And in that time, we were able to stop those violent acts of retaliatory acts, you know, when they went out. We're going hunting tonight for outlaws. I call up state police. I go, we're coming out tonight looking for guys. So they would have two unmarked and unmarked, and they would dole around. And then as soon as it looked like we might be on something, they would knock us all down at traffic stop. What are you guys doing tonight? Nothing. Okay. Have a good evening. And then they'd let us go. So we did that. I think in the Rico, we actually charged six of those events where they'd gone out to do something and we were able to stop it by just interdiction, just having the cops

• 2:18:15Speaker 05

  there, like, hey, we're watching you guys. And they knew they were on them. So they were like, you know, they go back, they swept the clubhouse for bugs. They thought we're getting bugged. Somebody's, you know, somebody's in on us. You know, I mean, they were, they were scrambling to figure out how this information was getting out. And then they also thought too, and we're in the middle of war with the outlaws. So of course cops are going to be watching us. And we do have to lay low and be smart about what we do. And so that's when it just seemed like it was a good opportunity to get out. And so we stopped, the undercover part for me stopped right there. I went and did the Grim Reapers after that for 15 months. But at that same time, I was helping Sandy de Volcanier put the Rico case together against the outlaws that were coming down and had done all the murders

• 2:19:00Speaker 05

  and the bombings and things like that.

• 2:19:04Speaker 05

  So in talking to Sandy, who did, I can't say enough about what an outstanding case she put together. I mean, it was two, two separate Ricos. They charged every violent act that these guys had done. But at that time, when they were doing surveillance on the Hills Henchmen, I was there being surveilled. So it helped Sandy in her case to have me there interviewing these guys. Because it was like, okay, Chris, were they, were you at Club 251 on Thursday, October 2? Like, yes, we were. Okay, so that corroborated, you know, the outlaws that had come forward and flipped to corroborate their statements and made it more, you know, I mean, more, yeah, yeah, definitely that occurred. So we were able to kind of put that together. But that's where I learned, you know, I was not fucking

• 2:19:49Speaker 05

  Beretta and super cool Batman. I was fucking very foolish and, and lucky.

• 2:20:01Speaker 05

  Though we didn't get killed. So, very, very thankful. So, so anyway, so we did the, I did the Grim Reapers next. Did you have any, when is the, did you meet Mel yet? Yeah, I had flown with Mel out to a, was a president's meeting in San Francisco. And I went out on a plane with them there when I was just official hang around. We flew out for that. Why would they bring you to that high level meeting? I didn't, I didn't get to go to the meeting part. I was just, I kind of inserted myself a little bit. I go, hey, you know, I got a brother. If you guys are going, you

• 2:20:44Speaker 05

  know, guy don't mind. And they were like, I don't give a shit. It was Ricky and the informant were gonna go out. So I just tagged along with those guys. They're like, yeah, come on. So it was just, just a way to kind of be seen but not seen. So. Did you interact with Mel at all? No. I saw him at the airport, shook his hand. That was it. Yeah, no, it just, knowing, Mel's like, he's gonna want to talk to you a little bit, get to know you. And I just, we couldn't take a chance on that. Because that would have burned out the CI completely. So we did was, I quit. After that, we quit. For a minute, um, did the Grim Reaper case, that lasted about 15 months. Got that indicted, helped Sandy with the Rico. So in 97, that's when the first Rico on the

• 2:21:26Speaker 05

  Outlaws came down and that kind of slowed. All the, all the violent acts stopped right then and there. Um, nothing was going on because these guys just got whacked. Angels weren't doing anything then because they thought, well, these guys just caught a Rico. We're going to catch a Rico too.

• 2:21:43Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:22:01Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:22:44Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:23:27Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:23:47Speaker 05

  So everybody was kind of waiting. Nobody was doing anything. So Sandy does the first round of Rico's in 97. A bunch of guys pled and then cooperated and gave them more information about what they were doing. Got to interviews a bunch of those guys. Um, and then she did a subsequent Rico like a year later that went back and indicted even more people uh under the Rico that they hadn't got wrapped up in the first Rico. We ended up doing a title three or she, I shouldn't say we, it uh Sandy did a title three on the outlaw clubhouse or the outlaw president and the guy that killed Monty Mathias, she was up on his phone. So we were getting a lot of, you know, bad talk on the phone calls. And again, every time those guys would go out, try to do something because we heard

• 2:24:32Speaker 05

  stuff on the phone, team would go out and knock them down.

• 2:24:38Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of close calls did you have?

• 2:24:40Speaker 05

  Um, that I knew about?

• 2:24:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that you knew about?

• 2:24:43Speaker 05

  I thought I had maybe three that I did know about.

• 2:24:48Shawn Ryan?

  Is this with the out, with the angels?

• 2:24:50Speaker 05

  With the angels.

• 2:24:51Shawn Ryan?

  What were the?

• 2:24:52Speaker 05

  Well, the, the reapers was a different one. Um, with the, with the, um, I forgot that we talked about this on the other, um, with the angels, it was probably three that I knew of, but about 20 altogether that I had.

• 2:25:09Shawn Ryan?

  20?

• 2:25:09Speaker 05

  I had no idea. And that's why I said, man, you gotta humbly walk through life. Because I, I thought I was that fuck. No way did I know. Sandy would say, did you know they were out at your apartment? I'm like, holy shit. She's like, yeah. And then I talked to the guy that cooperated. He goes, yeah, we were, did you have apartment? It was a two-story second floor in the corner. And I go, yeah. Sandy's looking at me, did you know that? I go, no. I'd like to say, oh yeah, I knew about it. Saw you guys. It's all cool. I had no idea. Why were, why were they at your apartment? To kill us.

• 2:25:41Speaker 05

  Because we were part of the, part of the angels.

• 2:25:44Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 2:25:46Speaker 05

  So there was probably, I think, twenty altogether.

• 2:25:50Speaker 05

  Three that I knew, so seventeen I didn't know. I kept checking them off. There were times when I was riding with the president that got blown up. You know, and you guys, because I'm a no guy, I'm in the back, you know, he's riding up front, we're riding together, but I still, because he's the president, I gotta give him his leave. Well, they were on an overpass, waiting for us to come over the overpass. And for whatever reason, they didn't shoot. And Sandy's like, did you know about that one? I go, I remember the time. She goes, you remember a car on the side of the road? I go, I don't. That's how I was not paying attention. I go, I did not. She goes, they were gonna get you then. And I'm like, fuck. Again, you just think you're, and I, I go to God, man. It's the hand of God. There's no doubt about it. You know, truly believe that. Truly believe that.

• 2:26:32Speaker 05

  Chris wasn't watching Chris, God was watching Chris. That's where we were at, at that point. There's no doubt in my mind.

• 2:26:41Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have, did you ever think you've been compromised? By the angels?

• 2:26:48Speaker 05

  By them? No. By, uh, the Grim Reapers, I thought, well, actually, the case agent that was Illinois State Trooper, one of the case agents, uh, Don York was the ATF case agent and, um,

• 2:27:01Speaker 05

  my guy we called Mongo, Pat, Jeff Patterson, was with the Illinois State Police. He was their, their guy. And Danny Roach was a, another guy. But, um, he came in one day and he goes, hey, man, he goes, they ran your shit. I go, yeah. We're getting ready, I'm ready to go to clubhouse. I'd been in for about six months. He goes, they ran your shit. He goes, doesn't come back. And I'm like, really? He goes, yeah. He goes, dude, they got some questions for you today. He goes, what are you gonna do? I go, well, I'm gonna go to the fucking clubhouse and I'm gonna whip a game. And he starts laughing. He goes, ah, I'm just fucking with you, bro. He goes, they ran your shit, it all came back, it's all good. And I'm like, you motherfucker, man. It's hard enough to do in this shit. And then you gotta fucking do that. So I'm good friends with the guy, but I was like, I wanted to dot his eye. I'm like, god dang, bro.

• 2:27:47Speaker 05

  Said, I'm under enough shit. I haven't had a break since this Hells Angel shit. I go, I'm like, I don't need this, man. So, yeah, so he was just being a dick. Um, but there was a time after we did, um, We did Indisha warrants, they call it, if you're familiar with that. No. So it's basically a club in Disha. So because we're looking at the enterprise of the Grim Reapers, we got search warrants based on Disha warrants, and we're looking for membership in this organization. And so Disha is like, you know, it could be anything from your, the drug, Grim Reaper patches, Grim Reaper paraphernalia, anything with Grim Reaper out that was in your house, we were able to take.

• 2:28:31Speaker 05

  But if we accidentally ran into pistols, guns, and dope, then we'd get a second search warrant for the pistols, guns, and the dope, and then we'd do that. So what they wanted to do is do these Disha warrants first. And I think we did 25 altogether, 25 warrants in five states. We hit them all simultaneously at the same time.

• 2:28:50Speaker 05

  Bunch of SWAT teams, state, local, federal, US Marshal Service helped us out, great guys. So we do these 25 search warrants, and I was telling the undercover, or telling the case agent in the SAC, Special Agent in Charge of Chicago, I go, if you let me stay in after the search warrants, just let me stay in, I'll be okay. I said, you know, yeah, they got hit with warrants, but we sealed the indictment, so they're not going to get what the probable cause of the warrants. Yeah, some of it was me, but a lot of the stuff in other states, I hadn't been there yet, so there's no way they could put that on me. So I'm like, let's just, I go, I think I could stay in there. So they're like, no, too dangerous, you're done, the undercover part's out. I'm like, bad mistake.

• 2:29:31Speaker 05

  So the US Attorney, Tate Chambers, who's probably one of the best attorneys I've ever worked with, he goes, he's like a southern, kind of southern Illinois, goes, now, Chris, you think you could stay in there with these boys for just a little bit longer? Maybe get some conversation about what they're all doing? I said, fuck yeah, Tate. I said, put me in, Coach. He's like, all right, let me make a call. So he calls the SAC, and he goes, your agent seems to think that he could stay in there and it'd be okay. And they're like, all right. But they, there was a two-week gap between that. So once they got hit, you know, went over the cell phones, or pagers.

• 2:30:10Speaker 05

  Everybody out. Don't come back to the clubhouse. It's fucking hot. Stay away. And so the informant we had that we did the fake thing in front of to in front of the judge. We had the informant say, I told Chris just to stay away, you know, stay back, you know, don't come around. So now two weeks have gone by and things have kind of slowed down. Nobody went to jail. So I was like, you motherfuckers are making it harder now because now I'm gonna have to explain where I was for two weeks. And why the fuck I wasn't a good enough brother to be down here when it all went to shit, start figuring this stuff out. And they're like, well, you said you could get back. And I'm like, yeah, if you let me go back the next day. I go, but two weeks is too much, too much time, man. It's gonna be hard. And they're like, well, we thought you were like this undercover guy. I'm like, so now it's the fucking questioning your fucking cojones.

• 2:30:54Speaker 05

  I'm like, alright dude, I'll go. So I went back and it, there was a lot of side eye look for a while. I remember we ended up in, um, we were doing a national run. We're down in Louisville, Kentucky. And, uh, one of the, uh, they got together in the meeting was to talk about all these search warrants. The guns they had lost, dope they had lost, all this stuff. And, uh, one of the guys smoking a joint, he's sitting there and they're like, why didn't anybody get arrested? And he takes a big hit off the joint. He goes, because we've been infiltrated, motherfuckers. And I'm looking at the dude and I'm behind the bar and I'm like, alright, what's he gonna say next? He goes, somebody's doing us and the reason we need to get arrested is that dude's still doing us now.

• 2:31:39Speaker 05

  And I'm like, it's not me, man. Maybe it's this dude over here. It's not me. And they were like, yeah, you're right. How are they doing us? And they're like, it can't be an undercover. And I was like, thank God he said that. I was like, felt a lot better about things. He goes, it's gotta be surveillance. And you know how those feds can beam down and turn our pages into wires? And I was like, man. Thank God that guy said that, cuz then they're gonna start looking around. Okay, who's the new guy? What's the common connection between all these warrants? And the guy that could put all that together? So, it was a, it was a rough couple of days.

• 2:32:19Shawn Ryan?

  Man, how the fuck are you carrying all that weight? I mean, you're, you're, you're geofenced into a small area. You've, you've been, you've been, what, three organizations now?

• 2:32:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, within, um.

• 2:32:30Shawn Ryan?

  So, you, you're paranoid about the current op? And all the fucking previous ones, probably, too?

• 2:32:36Speaker 05

  Then, the other problem was, these guys were aligned with the outlets from Joliet that I had done in the very first place. And this is only seven years later, this is 97. Some of those guys were, that I didn't do, knew about me, and knew about the seizure of the club and the guys that got arrested. So, there was one guy in particular, Ronnie Tomage, that was the president, and I knew who he was, and he knew about me because they'd gotten all the records of how they got done, and how the, the search warrant was done on the clubhouse, why it got seized, cuz they don't wanna make that same mistake twice. So, there's no more drug dealing in the, in the clubhouse, no more dope in the clubhouse, kind of a thing. So, he had all that information and knew, basically, who I was. So, Ronnie Tomage sometimes would call up, they were aligned, politically aligned with the Grim Reapers against the Angels.

• 2:33:22Speaker 05

  He would call up, I'd answer the phone at the clubhouse in Rock, or in, uh, Rock Island, and, uh, he'd go, "Yeah, it's Rod and Roddy, I'm on my way out." I go, "Okay." Like, and then I'd have to make excuse to leave in about two hours, cuz that's when Ronnie would be there. So, I was ducking those guys at the same time with the Grim Reapers. Um, and so now I think about it, yeah, I was pretty fucked up.

• 2:33:44Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit, man.

• 2:33:46Speaker 05

  Yeah. But again, grace of God, bro.

• 2:33:51Shawn Ryan?

  Why did you, why did you bring your wife in?

• 2:33:55Speaker 05

  First time?

• 2:33:55Shawn Ryan?

  First time.

• 2:33:56Speaker 05

  Because they're starting to question why, there was like, I'm not an exceptionally handsome lad, but kinda in the biker world, um, I could be a, I could be a solid eight.

• 2:34:09Speaker 05

  Pretty hard eight. Um, and so there was a lot of strippers that were like, "Brother, what up, man?" Yeah. "Oh, this doesn't look good to you? You're not..." I'm like, "Babe, you know what?" I go, "Mom never, my mom always told me never date a stripper, no offense." My mom told me that, and I go, "I got this girl, man." I go, "She's good." And they're like, "Whatever, dude." So, they were questioning like, you know, like the Grim Reapers had a girl... They go, take this bitch for a ride on your scoot. I'm like, alright. So I get out and our recording devices were like from the Stone Age. So we had these Niagara recorders that were like a 1970s reel to reel tape deck. You know, like a porno like.

• 2:34:53Speaker 05

  So you would wear that down here on your, in your crotch. And it had two microphones that came up to the side and the quality of it was great. But it's like carrying a brick in the front of your pants. And if you lift up your shirt or have an issue like that, and a lot of times you'd get in a little scuffle with the brothers. You know, they, they call it a mud check, especially the reapers, you know, they punch you in the chest. Like, what do you do, prospect? Like, I'm gonna wait till I get a full patch and we'll put my a hundred dollars on the bar. I'm not always gonna be a prospect. And then it's, we're gonna go. And they'd be like, ah. So a lot of times they just mud check, see what you're about. Are you gonna step up? You're gonna, you know, you're gonna protect yourself kind of a thing. They wanna see what you're about. So there's a lot of little skirmishes and shit. So I'd always have to keep, like, I'd cover that.

• 2:35:35Speaker 05

  And so you're trying to kind of wrestle with people, punch somebody and you're trying not to keep this shit out. The stuff we have now is like, it's unbelievable. And guys bitch about wearing it. It's like this big. Like, somebody could find that. I go, dude, I was wearing a reel to reel tape deck back in the day, like in my. So I'm like, yeah, no, I don't wanna hear like, oh, this little tiny thing is, is too hard to fuck. It's secret. Like, no, it isn't. Uh, so the reapers had, they had this two strippers, of course, I get in the clubhouse.

• 2:36:06Speaker 05

  One of the presidents says, prospect. And I'd been, got made prospect, had my prospect patch. He goes, uh, prospect, take that bitch for a ride. She needs some air. Like, alright. So I go out, I get on a scoot, she gets on the back and she starts with the, rubs the shoulders, goes in the back of my hair, down slowly. She's basically just searching me for fucking wire. She goes down by arms. At this point, I've got a, um, didn't have the recorder, thank God, at the time, but I had a one watt transmitter, which is, was a lot smaller and it was over on the right side. And I also had a big hole in my pants on this side. So she goes down through my legs, my back, my waist, you know, nothing.

• 2:36:50Speaker 05

  Well, then she starts fishing around and playing with my junk through the hole in my pants. You know, so I'm driving and my cover team was, you know, the guys are watching and they're seeing this go on. And I'm like, oh, fuck. So she's digging around in my pants. I go, babe, I go, nothing from nothing, but I'm gonna hit the note here in a second. I'm gonna make a mess and then we're gonna crash. She starts labs. She goes, oh, it's okay. It's all good. So we drive back to the, back to the clubhouse. I get off the bike. She gets off. She goes in. I can see the president look at her and she goes, it's like, it's all right. Like, all right. There was times they went out, they would toss my truck, you know, because the clubhouse had cameras outside, both the grimy reapers, they did it and the hell's henchmen. I'd be inside watching the surveillance camera

• 2:37:35Speaker 05

  outside and I see one of the brothers look around, open the passenger door on my truck, dig through the box, look in the back of the truck, you know, pop the hood real quick, look underneath, shut everything and then come back in. But they would, you know, they would check you like that. So you gotta be prepared.

• 2:37:48Shawn Ryan?

  Did you see him doing that to anybody else or just you?

• 2:37:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, I had to do it to other. I did it when I was a prospect for the reapers. They would be like, they just, you know, it was a look. It was like, they're like, like dude, you know, I'd go outside, look around, you know, pretend like I look around, check his car, come back in. Dude seems clean. It's all right. They're like, okay, all right. So they do it. He did it all the time.

• 2:38:11Shawn Ryan?

  Have you ever run into another undercover? Not knowing it? I mean, agencies don't do the best job of talking to each other.

• 2:38:19Speaker 05

  No, we don't. That's a fact too, man. That's a big fact. Um, I'm trying to think. I know people have, but I, I never experienced that. I never ran into another guy.

• 2:38:31Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 2:38:32Speaker 05

  It's almost like night vision. It's like if you look at it, you know, if he's got night vision, you get that red. So you could tell. So, yeah, no, I never had that.

• 2:38:39Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. What, um, you know, what, what was your,

• 2:38:46Shawn Ryan?

  you know, Mel talked about some of the violent shit that he's done yesterday, but he, I think he left a lot out. You get any?

• 2:38:53Speaker 05

  You know, I think what I'll say about Mel and his violent, Mel was a violent guy. There's no doubt about it. He had those Charles Manson lamps. When I saw him the first time, the way he looked and stuff in his eyes. I was like, Matt, that dude's a very bad man. He's a very bad man. And that was my first thoughts when I saw him. I think smells like, um, you know, Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible. So the angel comes down, they're running away, right? Lot, his wife, and Lot's wife turns around to look back as God's decimating.

• 2:39:28Speaker 05

  And she turns to Saul because she looked back at the past. And I think Jesus actually says in another, later on in, Jesus says, remember Lot's wife, or remember Lot's wife, don't look back. So, once you're forgiven, you don't look back. Once you come to God and you know, in your heart, asking forgiveness, God forgives you, it's done, it's forgiven, you do not look back. So, I think a lot of what Mel's is, with what he had done, I feel like, like he's gone out of his way to make amends to everybody pretty much ever beat up in his life. He's gone out, he goes, I'm sorry that I did that, you know? And he goes, um, but he's asked the Lord for forgiveness too.

• 2:40:13Speaker 05

  And I think it's very hard for him. I know when we were doing the sizzle reel for the movie stuff, I actually told him at one point, I said, brother, um, let's go home, man. I go, I can see it in your eyes now. I go, the guys, I don't want, I didn't want the crew guys that were doing the lighting and all this, I don't, I don't want them to know that guy. Cause that's not the guy I know now, that's not the guy I'm friends with. So, it's like, I go, let's just go home, man. I go, we, we live a, we got a good life, man. Got a roof over our head, we got a great family, you know, that loves us, we don't need to, there's, we don't need to make a movie. I said, plus, other than that, what you do now for people that you just talk to that are in a bad spot, he doesn't turn anybody away that comes to him and says, man, I did this and there's no way I could be forgiven.

• 2:40:58Speaker 05

  You know, Mel is like, right, no, that's not right, you know? So, I think for him to look back on that violence, it's almost like Lot's wife turning around. And I think he's afraid that, he doesn't wanna, he doesn't wanna re-experience it. But I go, brother, your story of redemption, it has to start with that, that violence, where you were, you know? That's what makes it real. Exactly. You know, I go, I told him one time, when, when he was doing the sizzle reel, he was minimizing the shit out, well, you know, I was a, I was an altar boy, you know? I go, brother, I go- I go, I don't arrest altar boys that all of a sudden start breaking windows, you know, on a Rico. I go, you did a little bit more than, he's like, he would hang his head and he's like, ah. And I go, brother, I go, you're gonna have to touch that dragon, man. You're

• 2:41:42Speaker 05

  gonna have to go back and, and get in touch with that a little bit and, and tell that story because your story of redemption, the people that come to him, they knew him back in the day when he was road. So they see that and they know he's changed and they know it's for real. I mean, we've been friends for 20 some years now and he has not gotten off the God Squad ever. You know, he's been, once he committed to it and he saw what it did in his life, the amount of peace that he got, he's like, this is where I need to be. And he goes, the ability to help people and shit, you know, he goes, I would pray on stuff, Chris. He goes, you know, I prayed God that he would bring those keys and let me out of jail. I would say that prayer every night. He goes, God just, God's got another plan. He goes, but the people he's rotated in through my life that I've been able to

• 2:42:27Speaker 05

  witness to or help come to know the Lord or just get out of the lifestyle. God, cause that guy was, he was like the Al Capone of Chicago in that he dealt, he knew and was friends with traditional organized crime, the mob guys in Chicago, all of them knew him, he knew them. They used to break bread together at a place on Rush Street in Chicago. They'd be in there eating, he'd be in there eating. He was locked up with them, uh, when he did his, his stint and, uh, his first federal stint, you know, they, they were buds, they knew him. He goes, and then you had all the street gangs, you know, the Mexican mafia guys, the Latin Kings, um, the gangster disciples, the vice lords. He knew all the leaders and all, and they all liked him. So he, his, like, and they all knew him by reputation. They knew what he had done in the past and he garnered great respect from

• 2:43:11Speaker 05

  those guys in the criminal community. So now that he's changed, I go, I go, those guys knew you when you were Mel, all those bad stories. So now where you're at with the Lord and your walk and the redemption component, I go, now these guys can see like, somebody that was as bad as them and as violent as them, and you can change your life. You're not stuck in this rut or this hole, man. You could actually make a difference and change. And I go, and you're the beacon for that. And I go, but we don't need to put it on the TV screen, man, or you don't need to make a movie about it. You got enough people coming to you now that you've helped. I go, that's, that's a life well-lived. I said, so, this other stu-, if it comes and more, and it, it's benefit to God's grace, great. And if it doesn't come, we're okay with that

• 2:43:52Speaker 05

  too, man. It's, we've, my humility at this point, I'm like, man, I've got nothing, I don't want to prove anything to anybody. I don't need a movie. I don't need any of that. I just need, I just want to live a happy life, man. You know, where I got some peace.

• 2:44:12Shawn Ryan?

  So his reputation spread far and wide.

• 2:44:15Speaker 05

  He was the poster child for the Hells Angels across the country and across the world.

• 2:44:20Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:44:21Speaker 05

  Everybody knew who he was. Everybody knew his reputation. I mean, you seen some of the earlier pictures? Um, yeah, that was Road. You know, he, he was a monster, no doubt about it.

• 2:44:34Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:44:38Speaker 05

  It's funny, I think it's, it might be a self-preservation thing with Melf too, a little bit, in that he goes, "Yeah, but I always had, I always thought of myself, I'm, I'm a good guy." And I, and I go, I go, Mel, in your heart of hearts, you are a good guy. I go, "You're a good man." I said, "But Road decided to lead you down a different road, man, and you weren't a very good man." At that point, it doesn't change who you are in your heart, but your actions dictate something completely different, man. I go, "But again, that's your tool, man. That's what you get these other guys to come up and go, 'I don't want to live the life anymore, and if this guy can make it, okay.'" He was doing prison, when we locked him up, we, we housed him in Henry

• 2:45:19Speaker 05

  County Jail, which is a jail, maybe 400 inmates, you know, in a county jail in western Illinois. And there was a guy, Rodney, and I have to give you the, the clip of Rodney. Rodney was a guy that, uh, he did prison ministry. His wife died in 1970. So every day after his wife passed away, he was a farmer. Get done working, farm, cattle, corn and beans, come into the local county jail to have Bible study. And he was the one that bought out of his own pocket TVs for the inmates, and he would have Bible study every- I think three days, four days a week, he would come in every day after work. So this guy's working his ass off every day. His wife died, his devotion to her and to like for his wife,

• 2:46:02Speaker 05

  he would come in. She's a devout Christian. He goes, I'm gonna, I'm gonna witness to these guys how Lord's changed my life. So he would do it every day. So when Mel got out there, this is 1970, Mel's now, 20 years later, Mel's in locked up with these guys.

• 2:46:17Speaker 05

  Mel and him clicked so tight together right off the bat because Mel was already telling these guys in there, you gotta, you gotta come to know the Lord and let's take a look at what you got caught with. And he'd have the sentencing guidelines, federal, and he'd go, what's your criminal history? And the guy would say, well, I've been down three times. Okay. Criminal history is this, here's what the, what they're gonna give you for your, what you did. The federal system's like they assign a number and the greater the crime, the higher the number. It's like a chart, you go like this, that's how much time you get. So he goes, you're looking at 360 to life. He goes, my suggestion to you, we're gonna prey on it, but I think you should cooperate and you know, come in on yourself and look for a reduction because you're gonna get hammered and that's the only way out of it.

• 2:47:02Speaker 05

  Like, well, what if I could beat the case? He goes, you could try. He goes, you could try to beat the case. He goes, if you want to, we'll prey on that too. Let's pray, see what, see what God has in store for you. So he would do that. So he hooks up with the prison ministry guy. And at one point, the sheriff called and said, or the lieutenant that ran it called me up and he said, he goes, hey, can, can Mel do his entire time? In here? And I go, why? He goes, because he basically came in and these guys would be playing dominoes, to be loud in the day room, slapping, everybody's yelling, and this poor guy,

• 2:47:36Speaker 05

  is trying to do Bible study. And so Mel came in one day and he said, hey, check it out, fellas. He goes, we're gonna do Bible study in the day room for 40 minutes. He goes, so you got two choices. You can join us for Bible study, or you can go sit quietly in your cell and reflect on life. He goes, those are your two choices. Your third choice is to slam dominoes and be loud because you're gonna, not gonna like what I'm gonna do to you after that. So this entire pod got a bunch of guys coming to Bible study. Everybody else would just go into their pod and sit there because he had Hell's Angel Forever tattooed on his friggin stomach. And they were like, okay. And again, it goes back to that. When you wear that tag, you got that respect.

• 2:48:18Speaker 05

  And they knew who he was, not only by reputation, but that he, that he was a Hell's Angel. And they knew he would get after it if he had to. He loved the Lord, but he'd also punch you in the mouth if you didn't listen to the Bible study that this Roddy guy had come in and took his time out of his own life to get you guys on a better track. He goes, you gotta respect that. And then actually, he went back years later. Roddy had Alzheimer's and was in a home. And there's a great videotape. Just his friend, he didn't know it, but his friend was videotaping it and he's talking to Rodney, thanking Rodney for, thank you for, wow. It's a great video, man. Real good video. Do you have that? He mailed us. I'd love to put that up. Yeah, should.

• 2:49:02Speaker 05

  Cause it just, he goes, Roddy, I can't thank you enough, tell you enough. And you see Roddy finally realizes like who Mel is, even through the dementia, and he just breaks down, just crying. He's like, thanks, cause I'm glad you came.

• 2:49:14Speaker 03

  I live in Florida now. I live in Florida. I live in Florida. I flew in just to come and see you. I wanted to see you here.

• 2:49:23Speaker 05

  Wow. Wow. Yeah, so there's that, that yin and yang, ebb and flow, good and bad. It's a constant, it's a battle. When did you link up with Jay Dobbin? Jay was, um, let's see, um, Jay got, I don't want, Jay's got a great story. I don't want to be a guy that tells Jay's story, but he had gotten, taken hostage, he was shot in Tucson, Arizona through the back, basically died on the way to the hospital. They paddled him back. Um, so he comes to, is an outstanding football player, um, wide receiver for the Wildcats.

• 2:50:12Speaker 05

  Very Noel and the, um, the shooting ended up being, um, you know, it was all over the newspaper. Tucson's not a super large community. And so Jay came up, um, to Chicago then got transferred up to Chicago and he was my partner for quite a few years before he went back to Tucson. So, uh, when he came up, we were in that SIG shooting where I told you the guy, all he wanted to know is if I decocked. That was, that was, the guy I was with was Jay. He got.

• 2:50:41Shawn Ryan?

  Tell that story again?

• 2:50:43Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 2:50:44Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't tell it in here, you told it out there.

• 2:50:46Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 2:50:48Speaker 05

  We did a gun reverse on, uh, two gang bangers from Joliet, Gangster Disciples.

• 2:50:54Speaker 05

  We went to do the takedown. We did the undercover part and then we just got in our car. And we just figured, oh shit, we had our stuff. We had done it offsite. The, the bad guys weren't by our car, so they didn't see anything. So we did it offsite. We, we get in our car and I had my, our vest and stuff in there. So we put our vest on and shit. And the takedown team was getting right behind them, knock them down on a felony stop. So as they vectoring behind them, Jay and I pulled in front because a lot of these guys squirt, you know, and they're going to run. You know, if you don't have them all blocked in. So we ended up being the lead car. Well, we were getting ready to make the stop there on the radio. Hey, we're getting ready to effect a stop. And, um, there was a kid on a bicycle that just out of nowhere showed up. And I'm like, hey, hey, we gotta move it down the road.

• 2:51:36Speaker 05

  There's a kid on a bike right here. By that point, they had already hit the lights and siren, let these guys know they're getting stopped. So the guy in the car with the two bad guys slows down. And, um, I speed up to get away from the kid. Hopefully draw these guys up farther up into the zone where we can knock them down safe and, um, make the arrest. Well, I get kind of blocking the road. Jay gets out the passenger side. I get out the driver's side and, um, the guy just floors it. And at the same time, the passenger gets out and he's like boom, boom, boom. He starts putting rounds down range. They hit Jay with the car before he hits him. I'm shooting back.

• 2:52:19Speaker 05

  They hit Jay with the car and it hits him so hard. He does that, you know, that football that, you know, you're like this, left, right, up, down. He was doing that before he got hit, but before he gets hit, he ups, boom, puts one in the guy's shoulder. Um, then he gets hit by the car, flips up over the top of the car, actually shoots again before he lands on the ground. I was kinda like, holy fuck, anybody else see that? That was kind of amazing. Oh yeah, get back. But, um, so Jay's down. I run over, I go, you're all right? He's like, go fucking get him like right up. So I jump in the car and it's a chase. We had Illinois State Police Band radios in there, so it's called a pursuit.

• 2:52:59Speaker 05

  You know, now the cavalry's, everybody's coming out of the woodwork. Um, ended up pitting a guy into a, like into a field. Um, they get out, they run. They're, uh, uh, they're in like an open field area with a lot of wooded, new construction. So didn't see exactly where they went when they left the car, trying to see if the guy still had a gun. I get up on top of the hill and I'm just peeping, just very slow, you know, just as small as I could be, still had the high ground, but I wanted to be able to see, you know, larger areas I could, looking for movement, looking for, trying to see where these guys squirted to. Um, and then I hear like huffing and puffing behind me and motherfucker, motherfucker. And it's Jay walking up the hill and he's got his gun and his badge in his hand.

• 2:53:43Speaker 05

  No shoes on, cause his shoes got knocked off his fucking feet. Knees are completely blown out. He goes, hey, I quit. I go, what? He goes, yeah. He goes, this fucking twice. He goes, hasn't even been like, not even two years. He goes, um, I'm all done. And I'm like, all right, bro. I go, check it out. I go, how about we find these guys? Make sure everything's cool in the gang. I go, then you can quit after that. But until then, you're standing up. We know there's a guy with a pistol. Hey, let's get down. And so he did. And so, um, so that was my-

• 2:54:13Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck this shit, I'm done.

• 2:54:14Speaker 05

  That was my first-

• 2:54:15Shawn Ryan?

  We're in the middle of a gunfight.

• 2:54:17Speaker 05

  I don't mind. How about you quit later? But, uh, no, just a great undercover agent and, and, um, Good investigator, no doubt about it. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's the first time. That's the first incident we had, but we worked together. I did a lot of UC stuff and we did some undercover together, but um, we bought some pipe bombs off a guy. One, oh, we go upstairs, now that you brought up Jade Adams, um, this guy was making pipe bombs. So we're like, oh shit, well. So we're like, how many do you have left? We don't want to tell them, go make us one, because you don't want to do that. He was like, do you have any left? I've got two. Don't sell them to anybody. We're gonna come get them. So this is right after the shooting.

• 2:54:57Speaker 05

  So Jake, we're going up the steps to this guy's apartment and the door is slightly open a little bit. And it's one of those apartments where you walk in, there's a little dinette and there's like a kitchen wraparound thing and it's got like a, like a hole through it so you can see into the other room. So we opened the door up and um, we're standing there and the guy's got a it's an AR-15 looking, but it's a nine millimeter. I forget, that's MG or it's the nine millimeter. It looks like an AR platform. He's just sitting there and he's like this and we're in the doorway. And we were just like,

• 2:55:34Speaker 05

  it was like, fuck, I can't even jerk my shit. At this point and get with this guy, we were both in the doorway and we just started and he goes, hey, just fucking with you motherfuckers. Check it out. It looks like an AR, but it's a nine millimeter. We're like, that's fucking great. And I'm like, I looked at it and Jay's like,

• 2:55:54Speaker 05

  he goes, I gotta stop hanging around you because no good's coming for this. So we go in and the guy's got the pipe bombs and I go, man, trying to get information about the pipe bomb, what's in it. So we're talking and I go, man, you got a lot of balls building those things, man. I go, I'm afraid that shit will go off. And he goes, ah, they're perfectly safe. And he starts banging them together. Yeah, I had kind of the fuse. Just safe. I'm like, that's good, bro. I trust you. It's safe. So, you know, we take them downstairs and we arrest them. We pick them up and, and take them out. But um, yeah, I, I just came to mind. That was another deal. But we've done just a lot of small deals, some undercover deals like that together, you know, buying guns and dope. Uh, we had another guy in our group, Mike Lippman.

• 2:56:34Speaker 05

  We did another really good undercover agent. We did one where he did some undercover for the FBI out of the South RA in Chicago. They had an organized crime case. And they had a guy that was making, this guy was crazy. He was an old school guy. He was making silencers. He was dealing cocaine, stealing cars. I mean, he was just like a one-stop-shopping for criminal activity. So Mike Lippman had gotten into him really good and he really liked Mike. So Mike said, hey, this guy's got a stolen Jaguar there. You know, you want to come with me and drive the Jaguar back and we'll figure out how we're going to do that. He goes, I'm going to buy some dope and he's got some new silencer thing he wants to show me. So I'm like, alright. So we get there and the guy is fucking nuts,

• 2:57:17Speaker 05

  but he's like a tool-and-die guy. So he's really good. So he was making prototype revolvers that he put a can on that actually worked. He was turning the barrel down, fixed the silencer, but he had the headspace, the gap, like so close that you still heard a noise and there was gas escaping, but it wasn't, it wasn't like, you know, there's a large enough space that a silencer, I mean, you could silence it to a degree, but not really effectively. This guy actually had figured out a way to do that with a revolver because that headspace was so tight. You've got to keep it lubed. So we get there, this guy's half nuts, and he goes, hey, he goes, you going to buy that Jaguar? And Mike introduces

• 2:58:01Speaker 05

  me to him. And he goes, yeah, my boy Chris is going to take it apart when he gets it back to his shop. He's like, alright, great. He goes, great car. It was an insurance job for another mob guy from the East Coast. So I'm looking at the Jaguar and he goes, hey, you guys need a bomb? Hey, bombs? And I'm looking like, is this some type of ATF undercover scenario at the academy where you go in and the guy's got a smorgasbord of shit? And I go, bombs? I go, yeah, I suppose we could all, he goes, dynamite. He goes, you guys could use dynamite. Your line of work, you need dynamite, right? I'm like, yeah, sure. You're like, you know, when in Rome? Okay. So he gets in his garage and he's got this box and he pulls it out. And I didn't pay a lot of attention during the

• 2:58:42Speaker 05

  explosive instruction at the academy, but I knew enough that it was very sweaty and I knew that if it was crystallized, it was a lot more shock sensitive because, I mean, it's pretty stable. I mean, you could throw it around, burn it, you know, it's not going to go off unless you've got an actual cap that's going to do it. So he goes, uh, or high explosive. So he goes, I go, what am I gonna do with this? I go, I throw it at somebody? He goes, oh, yeah. He goes, you need some caps? He goes, you need a bomb? I go, I don't necessarily need one, but I could probably use one at some point. He goes, okay. He goes, here's the dynamite. So he's got it on the table. He goes, let me find the caps. So he digs around his garage. He pulls out a box. He's got three blasting caps in a box and they've got that, you know, blasting caps. Oh, yeah.

• 2:59:27Speaker 05

  The shunt, you know, to make sure there's no static electricity that's all of a sudden connect the circuit. So it's got that little shunt thing. I think it's a shunt. My wife's gonna kill me for not knowing what the correct terminology is. Um, but I had the shunts in them. So I knew enough to, okay, that's okay. Um, so I get the caps and I go, well, what do I, how do we? He goes, oh, what do I gotta do? The whole fucking thing for you? He goes, you need a timer? You want a timed one? I go, sure. He's digging around his garage. He's got a mechanical egg timer that's already set up for, um, AA battery pack. It's got like six plastic where you clip them in. It's already wired up, soldered. No batteries in it or anything. And he goes, yeah. And he goes, the egg timer? He goes, these things are fucking beautiful. They never fail.

• 3:00:09Speaker 05

  And he'd already wired two wires, one to the actual timing thing that you turn. And the other one was to collect when the timer comes back up and it hits. Now it connects the circuit and the bomb goes off. So he's like, he goes, remember you gotta go past five minutes though and come back. He goes, because if you just do one or two, it might just go all the way front. He goes, you can't do that. You gotta go to five and then come back if you want like anywhere from one to four minutes. He goes, you gotta go to five and then bring the dial back. And I'm like, okay, good to know. So he gives us all that shit. And so now we got this fucking bomb. So Mike's over looking at the silencer on the, he goes, does this thing actually work? And that guy goes, watch. So he loads it in his garage and he fires a round off into a mattress and some other shit

• 3:00:54Speaker 05

  that he had up against the wall. We're like, oh, fuck. So he does that and it actually worked pretty well. And I'm like, this is kind of amazing. So Mike buys the silenced gun off him. He buys a quarter key of cocaine off him and we get the Jaguar. And we think we're fucking Miami Vice at this point. We're like, we are, who is cooler? That we gotta fuck it still with Jaguar. We got this dynamite. So the FBI guys, super happy, obviously they listen to the wire, happy with what we got. So we get out, we're still on pagers at this time. We did have cell phones in. So we didn't want them following us out. So we were kind of make sure we were clean. We got to a payphone. I call our explosive guy. I go, hey, man, I got three sticks of I don't know what. I see he goes, what's it look like? And he's like, oh, it's this kind of dynamite. Okay. He goes, what's the condition of it? I go, it's sweating all over place leaking. It's wet.

• 3:01:40Speaker 05

  He goes, all right, Eddie crystals. I go, no, no crystals. So I'm actually touching it and fucking with it, which is dumb. So I'm moving it around Gooner, Mike Lippman. We called him Goon. Goon said, let me see that dynamite. So he's like looking at we're touching it. So he goes, well, don't touch it. And I'm like, oh, okay. You know, I didn't know why. He goes, just don't touch it. He goes, make sure the caps and the explosive are separate. I go, yeah, it's with the cocaine in the trunk of the car. We're gonna drive it back to the FBI office. He goes, I'll meet you at the FBI office. So I'm like, okay, cool. So we start driving along and I start getting this fucking headache like, like my eyes are popping out of my head and I'm just like, man, like dizzy. I'm like, what the fuck?

• 3:02:18Speaker 05

  And Gooner's like, shit. He goes, it's the nitroglycerin that's leaking out of that. He goes, it's absorbed into our fingers and our hands now because we were stupid enough to fucking touch it. And so we got these massive pounding fucking headaches. So we get back to the FBI office. Get out of the car and I'm a little fucked up. Our bomb guy shows up on the set. He takes the dynamite. He used gloves. He didn't touch it because he didn't want a headache. So I go upstairs and tell the, the rack, hey, I go, hey, with ATF, is Ivan here? Ivan was the FBI agent we were working with. They're like, he's on his way back. I go, Well, let them know we got the bomb. It's downstairs in the parking lot. And the guy's like, you have a bomb in the parking lot? I go, it's a little one. It's only three sticks of dynamite and the caps. And the guy's like, are you fucking kidding me?

• 3:03:03Speaker 05

  Why did you bring a bomb in the parking lot? Because this was our meat spot. It's your case. Gonna be your evidence. Thought I'd come back to you. And they were like, the guy had a lot. He goes, we're gonna have to evacuate the building. I go, I don't think it's that necessary that we go that far. But, you know, so it was like, mercopa, sorry. Good point. Our bad. Shouldn't bring a bomb in the FBI office. That's probably not a good thing to do. So that was like, Jay was with us, I think, out on that one as a cover team. And Mike Littman, like I said, another really good undercover agent. So, yeah, we thought we were so fucking cool. You know, little did we know, just the stupidity of every aspect of where we were at, what we were doing, but, you know.

• 3:03:42Shawn Ryan?

  When did you move on to the Sons of Silence?

• 3:03:45Speaker 05

  I didn't, I did them. It was a, I didn't do them. Blake Botler and Darrell Edwards were two friends of mine, ATF agents. Another great undercovers. I stand on the shoulders of some guys that had done some fucking amazing shit around the country. These guys had gotten in and they were actually full patch with the Sons of Silence motorcycle gang. And we, they were looking for a club that was gonna get threatened by these guys. They had pretty much locked down Colorado Springs. And the case agent said, you know what? Blake Botler said, maybe we can get, if you guys ride around as a bike club, the normal protocol would be, hey, get a meeting together, you guys.

• 3:04:28Speaker 05

  And we came up with Unforgiven was our motorcycle gang. So we had Unforgiven, top rocker, Colorado, bottom rocker, which is a no-no.

• 3:04:37Speaker 05

  And we start driving around their bars in their area. So they were having meetings about, who the fuck are these unforgiven guys? And Blake Bolters in there recording the conversation. They go, we see these guys. Got to have them come in, yank their shit. Normal protocol. Like, alright, sees the bar, right? Um, so we're driving around. So Blake Bolters says, hey, you guys been to bars? They saw you. We kind of got the threat. If you could get a little bit more, maybe be, maybe be seen one more time. Go to their bar, Jenny's bar. You caught Ross Springs, Mike, okay. So we, you know, we're fucking riding our Harleys in. We get off the scoots. We go in. Well, the time that Blake had left the bar and told us there were no signs of their, signs of their, they're the actual guy that Doug Luckett.

• 3:05:19Speaker 05

  Was like, people get into fights and they're like, yeah, that guy was six, eight, fucking 400 pounds. Doug Luck, he was six, eight, 400 pounds.

• 3:05:27Speaker 05

  Doug Luckett had gone there. So when we walk in, he's there and the entire bar's there. And so it didn't end well for us at that time.

• 3:05:37Speaker 05

  He came out, he said, you guys are it. You think you're that, you're not. And they fucking got us. They got us good. So the whole bar basically beat the fuck out of us in this bar. That's where I got kicked and got that ear ringing from. There was one funny point in the middle of the fight. This is a funny, kind of a funny story. So I'm on the ground. I just get kicked. A bunch of people are piling on top of me, putting lumps on me. I get pulled off by a guy named Babyface, John Carr, was just another great, great guy, big, jacked up, yoked up guy. He pulls everybody off, gets me up. Well, they grab a Babyface, a guy I'm a full Nelson. And they are working him like a heavy bag. I mean, they're fucking just bam bam, beating him pretty good.

• 3:06:19Speaker 05

  So the one guy that's beating him looks over at his old lady and he goes, go get a pool cue. Or no, pool ball and come back and crush his skull. So she like runs over to the pool table. Now I'm trying to get, I'm like, this is, I'm trying to get to this chick. So she runs back before I can get there and she's got this. Pool ball in her hand and he goes crush his skull. So rather than crush his skull, she just goes and she threw it at him and it goes boop and it fell off his chest. And like everybody at the bar kinda caught that and started kinda laughing like, like, okay, that was pretty funny. And then he went back to beating her fucking ass, but Jay was in there. Jay was part of that, that crew too, that day, but yeah, so that's the, the Sons of Silence case.

• 3:07:03Speaker 05

  And then we got out to the door, ran outside, nursed our wounds and rode off into the sunset. So that's it. That's, that was my only son's sauce. But those guys, at the end of that case, I forget how much methamphetamine they bought. They got explosives, they got bombs, they got machine guns. Uh, it, there was, they did a, Blake and um, Daryl did an outstanding job, really good case.

• 3:07:27Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Where were you when I read that you got threatened to, they're gonna kill you, poke holes in your chest?

• 3:07:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was a guy, um, so we started after probably 10 years of the, um, the bike case. I had the same US attorney in the Central District of Illinois. He did the Outlaws case, uh, he did the Hells, Henchman, Angel Park. Um, and then we went back and because we could show historically that the Grim Reapers had bought about 250 kilos from the Joliet Angels, we did a dry conspiracy on those guys and arrested like, I think three or four members out of Joliet Outlaws and got them on the drug conspiracy. So this is like up to 2000, right around in there, I think, yeah, 99, 2000, right.

• 3:08:15Speaker 05

  Um, we're still working on Jay's, um, or not Jay's, but uh, Mel's indictment when we got him on 2004. Uh, then after that, I started doing, um, we were doing these Gideon operations around the country. And so we would go to like the worst city in the country and we would deploy into there. We would spend about two months doing a workup, talking to the local police department. Who are your worst guys? Who's the shot callers? Who are the hitters? Who are the trigger pullers? And we would focus on just those guys specifically to try to wrap them up in anything we could get. You know, El Capone eventually went to jail for income tax evasion. So never went to jail for how many people he killed or shot or booze, but income tax. So we found like ways to go in and try to take that violence out of that community.

• 3:09:00Speaker 05

  One of the ways we did it was um, stash house robberies. So I pretend like I'm a. Stash house robber, I'm a courier and um I know where probably 20 kilos of coke is. And it's kind of a whole scenario, I don't want to bore you with it completely. No, it's not boring. And a lot of, a lot of, a lot of people are still out there kind of um doing something similar, we changed it up a little bit, but we still do these type of proactive cases. Um, so I act like a drug courier and I go to the worst guys you got in the neighborhood, I go, you got some killers, man. And I met one guy one time in Vegas, he sat there and he pretty much succinctly put it in play, he goes, he goes, I don't need robbers to rob this place, he goes, I need killers that are gonna rob.

• 3:09:41Speaker 05

  Because the way it's set up is, I know where the dope is and I can drive us there eventually. However, there's four armed guards and they're vatos, they're, they're cartel guys, they're not gonna give that dope up. Be, just because we asked for it. And they're like, no, we understand. And we run it just the exact way a stash house runs for the cartels. So, everything looks exactly above board in the criminal community because that's how they operate. And that's how our scenario is set up. So, um, there's always a plan, the only guy that will uh, that is a connection between the stash house robbers and the cartel is me.

• 3:10:20Speaker 05

  I'm the guy that is gonna be introducing everybody, well, actually not introducing, but bringing them to the stash house to kill everybody and steal the coke. So, they know at the end of the day, cartels, they just, they don't like 20 bricks gone. They're gonna want to know where their dope went and they're gonna want to try to find who fucking robbed them. So, I'm the only linchpin. So, these guys generally always have another conversation without me that involves killing me. And this guy in this instance, they were talking about what are we gonna do with his body, what are we gonna do with Chris's body when we get done killing him? He's like, poke about 10 holes in that motherfucker, man. He goes, we gotta get deep in there, poke 10 holes. He goes, because what happens is when we throw him in the water in a river,

• 3:11:02Speaker 05

  gas blows him up and he floats to the surface. Poke about 10 holes, 10 holes in that motherfucker, he'll stay down with the fishies. So, that's what, that, that was the, we're gonna kill Chris. But generally in those cases, they're always gonna kill you at the end. But we've got things in place that they're not gonna kill you until they get the location of the stash house and we take them off before that.

• 3:11:24Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 3:11:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:11:28Speaker 05

  It works great. Some of the most violent guys I've ever met in my life are on those cases. Cause they're about, we're killing everybody in the house. I'm like, right on, bro.

• 3:11:39Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 3:11:40Speaker 05

  And then so many crimes have been solved after the fact when these guys cooperate, because you're looking at a chunk of time on that case. Well, these guys already have a history, violent history. They've already got convictions that bodes against them on the, on the federal case. They got a gun, the amount of dope we charged that they were gonna rob. So they, they look at a substantial more. And the only way to get out from under that is to cooperate. So you end up with guys that say, well, I could tell you about three murders or four murders, uh, give those up, so.

• 3:12:08Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I'm just, you know, going through some of the stuff in this staff house operate, staff house operates, staff.

• 3:12:15Speaker 05

  Stash.

• 3:12:15Shawn Ryan?

  Stash house operations. I mean, Phoenix, Arizona, 2009, 70 arrest during a wave of home invasions at drug locations. Oakland, California, 2012, police chief requested ATF help after violent crimes rose 20%. Four months laters, four months later, shootings were cut in half. California, 2012, crew member provided information to lead FBI to solve nearly $1 million in armored car heists. Chicago, 2013, arrested gangster disciples and forster from Inglewood, one of them later charged with murder on bail.

• 3:12:55Shawn Ryan?

  Did you put a real fucking dent in?

• 3:12:59Speaker 05

  They're bad people.

• 3:13:01Shawn Ryan?

  What was going on over there?

• 3:13:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. But it wasn't just me, man. I, I mean, I, the ones you're talking about, I did, but we've done those around the country and guys have done. Uh, some really heinous guys. I think I might have, we were talking earlier about the, uh, MS-13 guys that cut the fetus out of the girl's stomach. Richie Zayas, my partner from Tampa, Cuban guy, he did those guys.

• 3:13:26Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sorry, what did you just say?

• 3:13:28Speaker 05

  The MS-13, it was the guys that FBI had a case and they had an informant, female informant, that was giving them information. They'd relocated her and she came back to her red zone, unfortunately. They found her, they lured to a, lured her to a bridge, under a bridge. She was pregnant, so by virtue of the fact that she gave information about MS-13, they went ahead and held her up and they cut the fetus out of her stomach and then slit her throat.

• 3:14:00Speaker 05

  Richie Zayas, my partner from Tampa, had done that, sec a cruise guys, bought guns and dope off those guys. And then he testified at the sentencing about all the other criminal activity they had done and were doing at that time, in addition to the murder that they killed that witness and cut the fetus out of her stomach.

• 3:14:17Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 3:14:22Shawn Ryan?

  What's it like looking these fuckers in the eyes?

• 3:14:25Speaker 05

  It's fun because you know they're gonna go to jail in a minute, on the takedown and stuff. But I tell you, that's where people say there's not evil out there, everybody has self-worth. That's not true. I believe people can change. I believe generally that people are good, but there is evil. And there is evil in these people's eyes, man. They've got that look, and you just know. You can just feel it. This guy will kill me in a minute. This guy has killed people before. But those are the guys we need to, we want to remove them from the community. You know, it's like crabgrass in your lawn. You know, the bad guys, the uber violent guys are the crabgrass. You want to remove that so the rest of the grass can grow, healthy grass can grow. And so you gotta, you gotta have

• 3:15:10Speaker 05

  proactive law enforcement, and you gotta do that. But you know with the anti-law enforcement stuff, and everything's racially biased, it's like... It's harder to do those without having to fight that defense. A lot of times. Yeah. You know, it's almost like, um, on the stash out stuff. After I retired, you know, I did a thing for the Chicago Sun Times because I was tired of getting this. You're getting the defense side of it, but you're not getting the pro, the proactive side and why it's important to do those kinds of cases. And I, you know, they're like, well, you're just, you're just doing it in this one community. You're doing it in a black community, either Hispanic community or this community. I was like, no, we're doing it in any community. We find violent guys that are willing to step up and kill somebody for fucking cocaine.

• 3:15:55Speaker 05

  Because they're not doing good in the community. I said, we need to remove them because they're not just doing this. They're doing other criminal activity. And so when we meet them and we talk to them and they're like, hey, we're it. Like the guy, I did a couple for the FBI in Chicago and they were the, it's the one you read. They were the enforcers. Get that off the internet? Is that, is that where you got it? Those guys were, okay, those guys were the enforcers for, um, uh, the gangster disciples on the south side. And a guy told me, the guy that, that led the crew, the guy I stepped to first to say, hey, you got anybody that would do this or interested? He says, I'm interested and I've got a crew. And I said, well, I gotta meet them because you want to get that conversation from everybody. And he, I meet his crew and he comes ordering me afterwards. He goes, what do you think of my little go-getters, man?

• 3:16:39Speaker 05

  I said, fuck dude, they're about it, man. They'll jerk a pistol and go to work, won't they? He goes, fuck, yeah. He goes, you know that violence in Inglewood, all these murders that have happened, the last five murders on the south side? My guys, my guys took care of that. I'm like, right on, brother. So that's the people that you're taking out of the community, those uber violent guys. You're taking out of the community and that's important to do, man.

• 3:17:02Speaker 05

  But they're like, they were, you know, black gangster disciples, so they're a black gang. So the question is from the judge and stuff, why are you picking on, you know, you're just doing black guys? I'm like, look, look at the violence in these two communities on the west side and the south side of Chicago. Look at the level of violence there. I go, it's almost like losing your keys in the garage, but you're looking for them in the kitchen. It's like because the light's better and it's warmer. I said, bro, I'm not gonna catch, I'm not gonna find the keys in my kitchen because I've lost them in the garage. I'm not, if I'm tasked with preventing and, and stopping violent crime, especially used with a firearm, I go, I gotta go to places where it's very violent and they're using firearms. And unfortunately, it's disproportionately in these communities. But there's good people in those communities that if the priors are taken out, gives them a chance to.

• 3:17:47Shawn Ryan?

  And you know what happens if you don't fucking pay attention to those communities? And you let all those criminals keep going? You're a racist then too.

• 3:17:54Speaker 05

  Correct. Dude, there's no, it's common sense and good judgment has left the arena.

• 3:17:59Shawn Ryan?

  It's just a fucking losing battle.

• 3:18:01Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 3:18:01Shawn Ryan?

  You try to do good, you're a racist. You try to do bad, you're a racist. Like, well, it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's fucking ridiculous.

• 3:18:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. We had thirty shootings last weekend in Chicago.

• 3:18:13Shawn Ryan?

  Thirty shootings?

• 3:18:15Speaker 05

  And that's not even, uh, it's not even what we call a good weekend for shootings. Right? Crime has, violent crime murders, they've gone down to a degree. Um, and it's kind of on a slope. And it happened when the attitude toward law enforcement changed. Unfortunately, you know, it's gotta be political. And I think finally, after the George Floyd shit was done and the defund the police attitude was done, proactive law enforcement's coming back and you're starting to see those, the benefits of that, which is taking these violent guys off the street, man.

• 3:18:47Shawn Ryan?

  I said that wrong. I need to correct myself. I said, good or bad, you, you pay attention and you give the community attention and you arrest the bad guys.

• 3:18:57Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:18:57Shawn Ryan?

  In a black community and you're a racist.

• 3:19:00Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 3:19:00Shawn Ryan?

  If you neglect it because you're labeled a racist and you let crime run rampant, you're a racist.

• 3:19:06Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:19:06Shawn Ryan?

  So what the fuck are you supposed to do?

• 3:19:08Speaker 05

  You know, do you keep your nose down? You do your job. I know what I do. I know, I, when I go to heaven and God says, what about these guys? I, I gotta count for everybody I put in jail. You know, I didn't, I'm not gonna lie on anybody. I'm not gonna, I do any of that shit. You know, these guys went to jail because they jerked a pistol and went to work. Or they went, or they were talking about doing it, or they've already killed people. So these are the guys that we want to do, man. It's like, like Mel, and I, God bless him for changing his life. And I'm glad I did, but at that time, Mel needed to be taken off the set. He was the head of the snake. And I think that's why, once he changed and he went to jail, that's why the US attorney that had all these cases, he goes, man, we've had a good run. We've done a lot of clubs, we've done a lot of violent guys.

• 3:19:52Speaker 05

  There's no more, the Rico's that Sandy Devolone did up in Wisconsin. That stopped the violence, man. Cause guys got, we're looking at life and some guys got life. It's like, you know, what, and for what? You know, it's almost like the, uh, the fricking Rotary Club got after it with the, uh, some other philanthropic group in the community and said, your fish fry is not that good. So we're going to kill you guys. I mean, there's no, no actual reason to do that other than be, just for the sake of violence, being violence, man.

• 3:20:23Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:20:24Speaker 05

  So, yeah.

• 3:20:27Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Chris, let's take a break.

• 3:20:28Speaker 05

  Let's do it.

• 3:20:29Shawn Ryan?

  Then we'll talk about what, what got you out of the ATF.

• 3:20:33Speaker 05

  You got it.

• 3:20:33Shawn Ryan?

  Why'd you leave?

• 3:20:34Speaker 05

  Right on.

• 3:20:37Shawn Ryan?

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• 3:22:19Speaker 06

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• 3:23:28Shawn Ryan?

  We're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into kind of your last assignment, if that's what you call it, and why you left ATF. After 30 years, which may be enough in itself.

• 3:23:43Shawn Ryan?

  That's probably a good enough reason.

• 3:23:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. The last, uh, so I started working full-time for SOD, Special Operations Division, undercover branch. So I didn't work out of any one particular area. I worked all over the country. So we were doing these Gideon operations and, um, uh, we would, again, like I was talking about, we would focus on the communities that were really uber-violent and we were, we were running at those. So we were out in Cleveland, Ohio. Excuse me. And, um, at that point I was 55, maybe. I think I'm 55. Uh, I was 55 at the time or 54, 54. And, um,

• 3:24:28Speaker 05

  we were running, we would do, on those Gidians, we would run maybe 14 different operations a day. Undercover deals. We'd have a big board, whiteboard at the offsite. We'd like, okay, informant so-and-so's got this guy, this guy, this guy. Two undercover buys, just to meet for conversation. So we kind of mapped out our entire day to kind of maximize. Cause we were only there, we would do, we would run about, um, four months straight. Um, you know, every day for four months. We'd take Sundays off or something, go to a ballgame. But for the most part, I was kidding. You never got away with it or away with it, away from it. Um, it was just always, you know, cause we were trying to maximize the amount of time we had or maximize the much number, not defendants, but maximize enough encounters

• 3:25:11Speaker 05

  uh, in that period of time as we could in four months. So we were working pretty, pretty fast. Uh, the ones out in, uh, I think the most we ever did was 14 and that was out, uh, where you talked about that one in, um, San, or, um, um, Oakland, California. We were ripping and running, uh, every day. Uh, just into the evening, come back, cut reports, get ready for the next day. Informant says this, I met this guy undercover. He wants to meet the next day. So it's boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So we were doing one in Cleveland, Ohio and, um, we'd done a bunch of deals. It was near the end of the case. And we got information, a guy that, uh, violent dude, couple of time convicted felon, gang banger. Two of his buddies had like a bag full of stolen guns. Um, and it was just a simple.

• 3:25:58Speaker 05

  Deal that you've done, I've done, you know, I don't know, a couple hundred times, easy, no problem. Um, we get to the, we get to his house, I back up my undercover truck and uh, I get out of the truck, he's down, he's got this bag of guns, looked like guns, sitting on the ground and um, unzips it, I look in, I see this whole shit, just pistols and a couple shotguns and some other things. I'm like, alright, that looks good. So I turned to the undercover truck door, four door, basically, and I opened the back door and I hear that uh, click, I hear the hammer going back and locking back. And I was like,

• 3:26:43Speaker 05

  I turn around and he's, he's got it up and it's right in my face. And he goes, um, he goes, I think I need to see some money. But he's got that look like, I just want to see where it is so I don't have to pull it off you later, kind of look. And I was like, we train and we teach, like tying up with a guy with a pistol, because I know my cover team's about 20 seconds out, maybe 25 seconds, which is a long time when you're fighting for your life. But I know they're gonna, they're gonna come up and be there. But I was too far away from him to go hands on. And where we were situated, I knew where the cover team was gonna come up and deploy out of their vehicles and move up, not that

• 3:27:27Speaker 05

  they would have had any trouble navigating that and doing the thing, but I, I felt, I thought maybe I could just close the distance with this guy somehow and then I could go hands on. So um, he starts to go like this, like get down on your knees and um.

• 3:27:53Speaker 05

  I couldn't give him that.

• 3:27:56Speaker 05

  I couldn't give him that, so um. Ah, fuck, sorry. Um, so I tried to close the distance and I got the money out of my pocket that I had. And I'm like, I was just gonna throw it in the air. And so as soon as I took the money out, the entire expression in his eyes and on his face changed. And he starts smiling. And I was like, motherfucker. And he drops the gun, or he leaves the gun down and hangs on to it and he pulls the trigger and he lets the hammer go forward. And I ended up buying the gun and the bag of gun he had on me and then the bag of guns, I bought them all, got them in the truck and then I left. And I was like, for whatever reason, can't even tell you.

• 3:28:39Speaker 05

  That it's not the first time somebody had put a gun in my head. Um, on the home invasion crew guys that we were doing stash house, guy grabbed me and Frank Ferella grabbed me into a stall in the bathroom. We were having the meeting in a restaurant with his crew to do the store, the stash house robbery. And he goes, let me talk to you for a minute. I'm like, alright. Get in the bathroom and he gets me in the handicap stall and he gets a forty five out and he puts it up under my chin. He goes, we're for real, bro. If this thing isn't for real, I'm gonna fucking get you. And I'm like, I don't doubt that for a minute, bro. It's for real. He's like, alright. Did not have a, that did not affect me in any way. And there were other times guys would, you know, we're in the gun business.

• 3:29:19Speaker 05

  So there's always gonna be a pistol, but I cannot even, couldn't even tell you why that was just. I, I remember thoughts in my head were like Cleveland, Ohio. I'm gonna die in Cleveland, fucking Ohio. All this shit I've done. And it's Cleveland. And I was talking to, I ended up getting some help on it. And I was talking to the psychiatrist lady that helped me with it and um. I go, I could tell you where the sun was in the sky. The birds were chirping. I, I, I don't even know why that. I had that memory of that at that particular moment in time. Um, and then I felt like I let my kids down because

• 3:29:59Speaker 05

  I'd fucked up.

• 3:30:03Speaker 05

  So, um, so I, it really took, for whatever reason, again, I don't know if it was.

• 3:30:10Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you feel like you let your kids down?

• 3:30:12Speaker 05

  Because I always told them, I'm, I'm fine, I'm gonna be okay, you know? And they're like, you, I could just see, like, my daughter saying, well, you always said you were gonna be okay and you're not. Now, and so I, for me, it just felt like that, it just felt like that, had that feeling.

• 3:30:29Speaker 05

  I was just, I felt stupid, I felt like, again, I'm smarter than this, how did this guy get the fucking ups on me? How did this happen like this? And I think that, the other thing, it was so personal, man, I mean, the guy, we were right there. He smelled like shit, he smelled like bad BO, bad cologne and weed, with bad breath, you know? And you're that close and you just, it's all that things, you know, you become hypersensitive and acute to that. And I was just, I couldn't get on the ground and, um, like I said, I stepped forward and then got the money out and it, it all went. But it, uh, it just took its toll. So, that was when, I think Tina was down, my wife was down getting her, um, bomb tab.

• 3:31:11Speaker 05

  She was going through the, at Redstone Arsenal, where the training is. So, I know she was down doing that, and I remember when she got back, it was, uh, it was just incredibly weird. I'd be, middle of the night, it'd be 12 o'clock, and I'd have this frickin', something's wrong. I'm either gonna have a heart attack, or there's something wrong around here. And I'd go down, I'd look outside, go down to the basement. And I would just pace for like, three or four hours, I would walk, you know, trying to ramp myself down like, there's nothing wrong with you, you're not gonna die, not having a heart attack, you're okay. You know, I've been in peer support since 1988. You know, I've talked to guys that had been in way worse situations than that.

• 3:31:53Speaker 05

  And I felt like, um, I felt, part of it was, I felt like such a, a pussy. I felt like, how did I not, how, I didn't get shot. I have friends that got shot first 14 days on the frickin' job. I've buried my friends, um, that have been killed. I've got friends that are, um... You know, they're in a wheelchair right now. Um, because I just. It was hard to equate that I was feeling this shitty about um that incident that I could not, I was like, this is a nothing burger man. This is absolutely nothing. And um, so I'm in the talking this, I went to a friend of mine that's uh from the Illinois State Police who runs um

• 3:32:37Speaker 05

  um a center for families uh for first responders that have, you know, been in shooting, they run the whole family out there cornerstone. Um, it's a great program. So I called him up, I said, man, I got some, I'm dealing with something I can't figure out. So we get together and he goes, I got the perfect lady for you to talk to. And I knew his story and all the shit he had been through and I, so I assumed he was uh talking to her to get through his stuff. He goes, oh, no, I'm good. I don't have a problem. He goes, but you're fucked up. He goes, you need to go talk to her. I go, I know your background. I go, you gotta be fucked up. I go, I'm not the only fucked up one here. I go, you're fucked up too. He's like, no, you're more fucked up right now. He goes, here's the name, here's the number, call her. All right, set up an appointment, I go in, she listens to the whole story and she goes, why don't you read a book?

• 3:33:22Speaker 05

  I'm like, okay, what's that?

• 3:33:27Speaker 05

  Sorry.

• 3:33:28Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck, man.

• 3:33:29Speaker 05

  It's all good. She goes, uh, she goes, it's called Touching the Dragon. She goes, it's written by a Navy SEAL. I'm like, okay. So I start reading this book and I'm like, great book. All right, what a great career this guy's had. He gets shot and he struggles with getting shot and now he's off the teams. He's not anymore. He got shot one time in the, in the knee. Alcoholic blew up his family, the whole nine yards. Shot one time. So I get to page two oh seven at the bottom.

• 3:34:08Speaker 05

  And the guy that came to talk to him to help him had been shot 25 times and lived. And so he goes, I'm sitting here and I'm talking to this guy that'd been shot 25 times. And he's helping me try to get better. I've been shot one time in life. He talks about shame.

• 3:34:27Speaker 05

  He was like, fuck. Now I get it.

• 3:34:31Speaker 05

  Said shame is that thing you kinda, it's a

• 3:34:37Speaker 05

  it's a gift you give yourself, but you don't want it. But you wear that. Like I said, man, I could not figure out why I was in the basement walking for four hours. I had not been shot.

• 3:34:52Shawn Ryan?

  Do you know now?

• 3:34:53Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 3:34:54Shawn Ryan?

  Why?

• 3:34:55Speaker 05

  It's the, it's the straw. When you, when you operate at that hypervigilance level,

• 3:35:03Speaker 05

  at some point, your mind goes, oh, we're all done now. Your body's like, your body's done. My mind's telling you, we're all done. And it ends it. And that's where I was at. I was at the end of point.

• 3:35:16Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck, Chris, you did 30 fucking years. You were undercover within a year.

• 3:35:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:35:24Shawn Ryan?

  That's a lot of shit, man.

• 3:35:25Speaker 05

  It is. I realize that.

• 3:35:28Shawn Ryan?

  It is, yeah. A lot of shit.

• 3:35:31Speaker 05

  But again, I know.

• 3:35:32Shawn Ryan?

  Cause most of it is a one man band.

• 3:35:34Speaker 05

  Yes, it's true. It's true. But you don't want to be that weak link in that crew. And you know that as well as anybody. You don't want to be that guy that's got a problem. You don't want to be that guy that can't take it. You want to be that guy that, you want to be, we're fucking Superman. I don't know if you noticed that, but we got capes in our trucks. You know, you want to be that guy, or at least you have that for yourself. And maybe that helps you get through 30 years of, of shit. But at some point, man, the, the body keeps score. And I was just at that point where, so I did the EMDR and prolonged exposure and it was, um, I got myself back to quasi-normal.

• 3:36:14Shawn Ryan?

  How long did that take?

• 3:36:15Speaker 05

  You know, I was surprised at how quickly the anxiety point left. Um, the prolonged exposure, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but I go through it with the therapist. He's got a little recorder. And I thought it was dumb at first. She goes, I want you to tell the same story I told you. I want you to tell it into the recorder. And do it five times, record it, and I want you to listen to it for five times. It takes about thirty-five minutes, the whole time. She goes, you need to do it every day. So I'm like on my way home and I'm like, you fucking kidding me? I'm gonna speak into this recorder. I'm pacing in the basement for four hours a night. I'm thinking about just driving off a cliff. I go,

• 3:36:55Speaker 05

  this little recorder and this shit is not gonna work. But I did it anyway. I was like, and I noticed the anxiety level at about day five started to lessen. And then I noticed that I would get, I could not tell it, I'm surprised it.

• 3:37:13Speaker 05

  I got to the point where I could tell that story in the recorder and I wasn't, it didn't have that visceral friggin' effect anymore. It seemed like it was almost, um, it was there, but it wasn't there, you know? It was more abstract. It was kind of stepped away from where I was at mentally. And I was like, wow, okay. Um, I slept, started sleeping better, felt better. And then she did the EMDR. And that, by the time I did the EMDR, I was like, I felt that you don't have that right here. Where your anxiety level's through the roof. I'm looking at everybody. It just, that kind of like, it finally, it was just kind of, I got some relief. And it, um, so that book and that, that lady definitely saved my life.

• 3:37:58Speaker 05

  No doubt. Wow. Yeah. But again, I'm not the, when I look at what other people have done, like the John Rettunos, you know, um, the Richie Ziases, these guys that have,

• 3:38:12Speaker 05

  man, I, it was funny. I talked to Ricky Zias later, but I, um, he goes, you have nightmares? And I'm like, yeah. He goes, man, he goes, I wake up screaming. And he had gotten a divorce and he was with his new girlfriend. And she's like, yeah, he screams like every night. And I go, hey dude, you remember all those times I was telling you like, I'm struggling with this shit? And you said, hey man, just suck it up, drink a beer, do a shot, off to the next adventure. I go, it would have been really nice if you said, hey, I have nightmares. So I'm like, I tell everybody now, if you're having an issue or a problem, do not frickin' swallow it. And especially don't start doing shots and drinking beer, cause you're just exasperating in that situation. I said, come talk to me or something. I go, I've got, no, I've done what I've done and I'm good. I said, but.

• 3:38:55Speaker 05

  Walking, you've done thirty years, or guys have done twenty years, or ten years on the teams. I go, there's no sense. Being that miserable and having that constant vigilance and then anxiety in your gut in your head. It just takes, it takes the fun out of life and everything. So, you know, if anybody gets anything about me talking today, get some help. And there's plenty of things out there. We've come so far in our ability to treat that and move that forward. You gotta do it, man. You can't not do it. And you owe it to your family. You owe it to yourself.

• 3:39:26Shawn Ryan?

  We talk about this all the time on here. You were gonna kill yourself?

• 3:39:31Speaker 05

  It got to the point where I, I knew that in the basement, I, um, I couldn't go on. I, I can't, this, the amount of anxiety and heightened sense of just like skin crawling off. I just, I was like, I can't live like this, man. I can't do it. But then.

• 3:39:48Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know how you were gonna do it?

• 3:39:50Speaker 05

  Never got that. I, I would probably just shoot myself, but I never, I never sat down and planned it out. Or I'm gonna get in the truck, I'm gonna drive away. Cause my thing, my was like, my kids had put up with so much shit of me being gone and things like that. That was the thing that I was like, there is no fucking way. There, I was just like, dude, you gotta quit being a fucking, I was saying to myself, you gotta quit being a pussy. You gotta stand up and fucking fix this shit and do it right. And I just, I could not do that to my kids, man. There was just no way. So, yeah. So that lady, that book, if I could meet that seal sometime, um, I'd friggin', love to tell them thanks. Because that definitely, um.

• 3:40:34Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, I got a feeling something's gonna happen after this releases. Um, it always does.

• 3:40:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:40:45Shawn Ryan?

  What about drinking? Drugs? Anything like that?

• 3:40:48Speaker 05

  No.

• 3:40:49Shawn Ryan?

  No shit? You never fell under that?

• 3:40:51Speaker 05

  I used to dr- I drunk, you know, in that culture. I was a fourteen beers and three shots guy, you know, and I'm not a, I'm not a big dude. But I could do that, still get on a Harley and ride away. But, um, I, I don't do that anymore. That's been, I do, if I do one or two beers, it's a big night and I'm in bed at eight thirty.

• 3:41:12Speaker 05

  I enjoy my grass in the backyard.

• 3:41:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, it's a different, I, uh, I actually got a job. I do, uh. Frame of frustration on old like Willys's Jeeps. My father kind of got me into it and so I do that kind of in honor of him. He's passed. And I work with a guy that actually Mel knows him, but I arrested him a while back for Hobzac robbery. And I ran into him after he did about four and a half, five years. Ran into him, he was in the halfway house and he had to get a job to be in the halfway house and it's part of his parole. So we run into him, he was managing a restaurant bar. We Tina and I just, my wife had gone in to just get a sandwich with some friends. And there he was standing there and I was like Ricky, you're out.

• 3:41:59Speaker 05

  He goes, Chris, I am. I'm like, so I go, well, how you doing, brother? And he goes, I'm doing good. And I go, you look good, you look great. You're working out. He was a big kid. He goes, yeah, yeah, I'm back to working out. I go, you at the halfway house? He goes, yeah. I go, what are you doing now? He goes, well, he goes, he was an idiot's about mechanic, like never formally trained, but could wrench on any car, any Harley. He was unbelievable mechanic as well. He goes, a friend of mine's doing me a solid, older guy. He's giving me a shop area. I'm good, so I'm setting up a shop. I'm just going to work on cars. I go, that's fricking great, man. I go, good for you. He goes, yeah. He goes, um, I go, we good? I go, cause we're in a restaurant now and you know? He goes, no, we're, we're more than good, dude.

• 3:42:42Speaker 05

  He goes, I changed my life. He goes, I'm going to do things differently. And he goes, for all the shit I did before I went to jail on your thing. He said, if I just do this five years and get out, I'm good. And I'm like, very cool. So fast forward a couple of years, my dad blew up the motor on his Jeep. So I called up Mel and I said, you remember Ricky? He's like, yeah. I talked to Ricky every now and then. I'm like, he was the guy from the neighborhood kind of guy. I said, think there's any hard feelings? I go, I got this Jeep that I'm looking at working on. I don't have enough room in my garage to pull the motor out and take the tub off. I'm gonna redo the whole thing. He's like, call him. So I called a brickie and he's like, fuck, call him. Bring it.

• 3:43:27Speaker 05

  So I trailer it out there and put it in his garage. He takes the engine out within like 15 minutes. Figures out what's wrong with it. It's gotta be rebuilt. Pulls all the pistons and crank off.

• 3:43:38Speaker 05

  And he goes, you're pretty good with a wrench. She goes, I go, well, I'm retired and I'm looking for shit to do. He goes, brother, he goes, I'll clean a part off my, over here in the corner. He goes, you just wanna bring cars in and wrench on them? He goes, you can come anytime. So I just started, you know, a couple of days and then pretty soon I was like, oh, I like coming here and wrenching on cars and, you know, just there's a solace of just building something, you know? And, uh, and we talk about, he, it's funny cause he talks about, you never would have got me for this. I go, I knew you were doing that. He's like, no fucking way. He goes, if I had have done this, would you have got me? I go, no. But he's, uh, he's one of those guys. He's a lot like, uh, it's a lot like Mel. He's, uh, he's worked seven days a week, 365 days a year since he got out.

• 3:44:21Speaker 05

  And, uh, I'm impressed by not only his commitment to staying out of trouble, but also just how he's living his life. He's just, he's a good, he's a good man. He takes care of people. He's just, there's people that come in there. He's got a shop that, excuse me, um, no big marquee, but, uh, people that are maybe struggling with the amount of money they have to get something fixed. And if you got a newer car and it's gonna be 1500, you know, or $2,000, he goes, let me take, I'll take care of it. And he does it, does it on the cheap. And he's just, he's a good guy. He's a good guy. So I bid, that's, I go, that's my little place of solace. I get my, my wrench out, take a few motors apart. Yeah, it's, it's awesome.

• 3:45:00Speaker 05

  It's good. Good for you, man. So I was, uh, at 56 is when I, uh, I could go to 57, but at 56, I was like, after the Cleveland thing. Just, I'm like, you know what? I'm, I'm good. I've 30 years. I'm, I'm, I'm all done now. I'm good.

• 3:45:18Speaker 05

  Was a hell of a ride. It was. I don't think I changed a thing. Well, maybe a couple of things, but I like very much where I'm at now. I think, you know, it was funny. I went, Mel had a, he was on social media at the time when I retired, you know, he's big social media devotionals, you know, second chance, always stay in the fight, you know, not physical fight, but stay in the fight to do better. And there was a little kid, his father had reached out, this kid had leukemia and he was on his last chemotherapy coming up. And so his dad reaches out to Mel, he says, my son follows you on Instagram or whatever. I'm not on anything. So I could

• 3:46:01Speaker 05

  couldn't even tell you what platform it was that he was on. But he goes, my son loves your devotionals and he loves like your second chance and don't give up. He goes, he's been fighting leukemia. He goes, his last chemo's coming up, like this Friday or next Friday or something. He goes, any way you could call him or he goes, well, typical Mel. He goes, I'll be in Chicago that weekend. He goes, I'll come up a day early. He goes, you might have, my buddy Chris will pick us up, the guy that arrested me, pick us up at the airport. We'll come. Absolutely. We're at. He's like, well, he gets his last treatment at like two o'clock. And I'm like, and Mel's like, great. Calls me. And I'm like, he goes, you want to meet this kid? I go, absolutely. So we go over and we sit down with this little guy. And when he came in, it was his, his last chemo treatment. So I don't know if

• 3:46:44Speaker 05

  you ever been with anybody that's had cancer, but the last treatment, I mean, you ring the bell and it, you're pretty beat up after all that poison going through your system. So this little kid comes in, looked sad, and then he sees Mel and he's like smiling. And he's like, he's like, oh, Mel. He started, Mel's like, hey, I've heard all about you. You, you played baseball and Mel had the whole kid's whole bio. He's talking to him and telling him stuff. And Hulk Hogan had sent him some autographed pictures and he had a little thing from Hogan, like stay in a fight, you know, so he'd done all this stuff for this little kid. So we were only supposed to stay about 45 minutes.

• 3:47:21Speaker 05

  Or an hour, we end up being there like four and a half, five hours. By the end of it, I'm crying, Mel's crying, his parents are crying. You know, it's just, it's just a great moment for this little guy. So, at this time is right when I was retiring and I was, um, I was having the problems in the basement. And I never told Mel that I'd been diagnosed with anything, or that I had some issues, but he knew that. He goes, what's going on with you? And so I told him, after we met with this little guy, um, I was driving him to the airport. And I said, well, I said, brother, I said, man, I don't even know if it's all worthwhile, bro. I said, I did so much battle damage to my kids, my family, myself. I'm like, I don't, I don't think it was worth it. So typical Mel, as you met him, he's popping a stick of gum in his mouth. He's got his bag and we're pulling up to

• 3:48:04Speaker 05

  the, um, to the terminal. He goes, let me tell you something, dude. He goes, if God's only plan was for you to be an ATF agent, do all your shit, arrest me, put me in jail, I change my life, I come out, I do all this other stuff, I meet this young man who's suffering from cancer, and we gave him five hours where he's happy because he got an autographed picture of Hulk Hogan. He goes, it's all fucking worthwhile. It's God's plan. He goes, and who the, are you to decide what God's plan's about? And I was like, and he gets out of the truck. He goes, I'll see yous next week. I'm like, okay. And he left. And I was like, that was that kind of universe switch where it's like, maybe I'm looking

• 3:48:49Speaker 05

  at this the wrong way. You know, all this stuff is a gift.

• 3:48:54Speaker 05

  It's a good way to look at it. Yeah. So that's when Miller introduced me to his pastor, his old pastor, that's just a salt of the earth guy, Pastor Steve. This guy was, turned 50 and he wanted to bench 500 pounds on his 50th birthday. So he did. Holy fuck. So he's that guy. He's, is, he's just a monstrous guy, but.

• 3:49:17Speaker 05

  I love him, man. He's, he's helped me come a long way in my walk with the Lord, as with Mel. Um, he's just one of those guys. That guy never gave up on Mel from fifty. He would pray for him all the time. Mel, he said, he, the pastor told me, he goes, I, I paged that big lug at like two o'clock in the morning. I knew he was out doing fucking shit. I paged him. I love you. I'm praying for you. You know, it was like, wow, like, right on. So he never quit and he never gave up. So, man, just being in that universe of people that are that. Not like that, you know, they show the glory to God and, um, the peace that you get from, from having that in your life. I really, I'm just, I'm very happy that I have it.

• 3:49:59Speaker 05

  I'm happy for you. Thank you, brother. You're there, bro. I, I've listened to you talk. I've, I, I know you're, you seem to be maybe on the front end, like you're coming into it, coming into your faith. Um, it's easy to lose sometimes, understood, but, um,

• 3:50:18Speaker 05

  you're getting there, brother. You are. You're a good man. You know it.

• 3:50:25Shawn Ryan?

  When is the first time you, uh, met Mel? Not, not at the airport after, after he got out of prison or before?

• 3:50:33Speaker 05

  First time I met him was, um, right after, um,

• 3:50:37Speaker 05

  his attorney told us in the courtroom, because he's been out of the club for four years. He'll just plead to his shit and he wants to be done. And the US attorney's like, that's great, but he's got to come in for a proffer. He's got to sit down and spell it all out. So that's when we first, we first talked. That's when I took him to the bathroom when he was all chained up. And, um, he's like, fuck dude. And I go, brother, I go, this is just a speed bump in, in the road of life. Just a speed bump, man. You'll get through it. He's like, he goes, I'm looking at 24 years, dude. I said, well, I go, but you're doing the right thing. You're minimizing, you know, your exposure by cooperating and coming in on yourself and pleading guilty. So

• 3:51:15Speaker 05

  you're going to get credit for that. I go, that's for you. That's, that's the best you could do. He goes, you got me? I go, we got you. He's like, okay.

• 3:51:24Shawn Ryan?

  How about after prison?

• 3:51:27Speaker 05

  Um, yeah, you know, it's so funny, um,

• 3:51:31Speaker 05

  I think I got him at the airport when he got released.

• 3:51:36Speaker 05

  He goes, hey, can you pick me up? The marshals are gonna drop me at the airport. And he goes, I got nothing. He goes, I wanna kinda surprise my mom. I don't wanna call anybody from Chicago that I know that I'm coming home. He goes, one, I don't want any of the degenerates coming. I don't wanna... I go, yeah, I'll pick you up. So I scooped him and drove him to his mom's house and sat down. So we had his mom, of course... Wait, did this was right after prison? Yeah, right when he got out, after his four... Your first call? Yeah, he called me, yeah. Holy shit. Yep. Yep, sounds kinda funny. Yeah, so I picked him up and his mom, and of course, we had to eat right away. She... Her mom's like this tall, little Italian lady.

• 3:52:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, funny. So she cooked us up a great lunch. We ate. Not even awkward, huh? Nah, you know what? I kinda knew Mel before I knew Mel. Um, when he was locked up, I would listen to his prison calls because you get a lot of information. Like, guys will be... They all know it's recorded. But you'll have... They make statements and say shit that you can use against them all the time. So, back in the day, when he was locked up on the state and the federal stuff, I would listen to all his jail calls. And it was always interesting that I would hear how he talked to the criminal community, and I heard how he talked to his friends and his family. And you could... You could see that he wasn't robed 24/7. He was robed with this crew, and he was somebody else with this crew.

• 3:53:01Speaker 05

  And I was like, I didn't... I didn't really expect that. I mean, everybody's got a mom. Every mobster's got a mom, uh, you know? But it was different because he wouldn't allow his friends to get anywhere near the club. Like, he had some pipe-hitting friends that... Personal friends. But he would not let those guys. He goes, nope. Nope, not for you. So he wouldn't let them anywhere near it. So... I was like, okay. So there was... I could tell there was a difference. And then, like I said, he'd been out for four years and was living his life when we got him. So...

• 3:53:39Shawn Ryan?

  You guys seem like you've changed a lot.

• 3:53:42Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:53:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, cuz if he was on bullshit, we would have smelled that out than the first.

• 3:53:51Speaker 05

  He would have got right back into it if he and it. There's no reason he did. He couldn't have. He would have given him the patch right back. He could have gone right back into the mix. Or, you know, he knew, like I said, enough criminals in the community. He could have gone back to whatever life he wanted to go back to with any one of them, you know, being a major player, but he didn't. I'm like right on. But he, yeah, he's.

• 3:54:18Speaker 05

  He's a good friend.

• 3:54:20Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Well, we got one last section here.

• 3:54:24Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:54:25Shawn Ryan?

  So we got this new thing we're doing called the hot question.

• 3:54:28Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:54:29Shawn Ryan?

  So Claude, same, same AI program.

• 3:54:33Speaker 05

  Where you got all that other information from?

• 3:54:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, we asked Claude to give us an incredible question for Mel the other day. And today, we had to scrape the entire internet for everything that's out there on you. And here's what I came up with. So here's the question. What's something people don't understand about infiltrating biker gangs? That could get you killed instantly if you mess it up? And what's the closest you've ever come to getting exposed and killed?

• 3:55:03Speaker 05

  Um, the thing not to do is show disrespect to anybody, membership wise. If you're new and you show up on the set and you disrespect or you act like you're all that in a bag of chips, you'll get your ass beat in very short order. So knowing the protocol and knowing how to act. As far as coming close on a killing part from a biker standpoint, probably coming close to being killed happened, I found out about it after the fact, more so than at the time. I knew there were times where the allies were looking to get us and that it would be a problem. So there were very, there were close times then, but um, it, it was well beyond anything I knew at the time.

• 3:55:47Speaker 05

  And the realization of that later was very hard.

• 3:55:52Shawn Ryan?

  What is the? How do you ride in the formation?

• 3:55:58Speaker 05

  Well, it's usually president, vice president, road captain, you know, enforcer. There's like a little, depends on the club have different. So they lead the pack. You're gonna have blockers that ride next to the plaque. So if you're running a whole line of bikes through a town, blockers ride up on either side of the pack and they block that intersection or corner. So cars can't interrupt the, the club thing. They were coming out of the pack after Monty's funeral from the funeral home when I was the, I was doing security at the gate at the Hells Henshaw Clubhouse in Rockford. And some guy cut them into the pack and they ended up shooting the guy and dumping like five rounds.

• 3:56:41Speaker 05

  And then I've got the gate and I can hear these guys flying up. I see these guys like this, you know, I open the gate up and they run a car in and jump out, guns go flying in different directions and everybody hunkers down and just sits there watching TV like they didn't do anything. Police cars flying all over the place. I just shut the gate and nothing happened. So cutting bikers off will definitely get you killed in a heartbeat. So, yeah.

• 3:57:07Shawn Ryan?

  And then last thing. Break down some gang terminology for us. What are some common terms and slang that were being used on the streets?

• 3:57:18Speaker 05

  There, I think the street vernacular, we always call it, like straps, bangers, thumpers, murk them, I'm gonna, it's kill them. So guns are straps, bangers, thumpers, hammers. You're gonna bang hammers, you're gonna shoot somebody. Gonna murk them, you're gonna murk them, gonna put them down, gonna put them down. Gonna get them to bow down. That motherfucker will bow down. That means basically you got the gun on them and what the guy wanted me to do in Cleveland, you gotta bow down. So that would be stuff I, like, you know, they've got bikers have different terms for old ladies, property of, you know, you might have an old lady that's property of the club or property of a certain member, you know, they do a lot of that.

• 3:58:00Speaker 05

  So it's kind of the street vernacular, but it's almost, it transcends just, you know, bikers or street gangs, you know, same terminology, licks. If you're gonna hit a lick, shit, I'm gonna get down on a lick, you're gonna do robbery. You know, I'm gonna hit that lick, I'm gonna rip that shit off, I'm gonna tear it off them. Shit like that means I'm gonna rob them.

• 3:58:19Speaker 05

  So that's, that's kind of the street vernacular, I guess, if you will.

• 3:58:23Shawn Ryan?

  Do you miss it?

• 3:58:25Speaker 05

  Sometimes, I, you know, it's funny, I, I get to, and I'm, it, ATS been very nice into having me back to help teach at the academy and teach some field operations and undercover. So, um, I get to dip my toe and, uh, and look at some, maybe some hard chargers, some guy, we got some guys now, man. It's like being a father and your son just fricking hit the home run and, or fricking, you know, won the Super Bowl or some shit or threw the touchdown pass. When you see a lot of what these guys have accomplished and what they've done and how they've protected themselves, how they've saved their fellow agents in shootings and stuff and robberies and man, it's just, you get you proud that, you know, man, these guys, these guys are still jerking their shit and go to work. You know, you get excited for them, you know, but then I get to go home and like I said, my grass is nice in the backyard and

• 3:59:11Speaker 05

  I get to wrench on my Jeep. So I get that momentary like, mm, yeah, even though I'm not in it at all on any level. So.

• 3:59:19Shawn Ryan?

  Ah, man.

• 3:59:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:59:20Shawn Ryan?

  You want to end in a prayer?

• 3:59:23Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 3:59:24Shawn Ryan?

  You want to lead it?

• 3:59:25Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:59:25Shawn Ryan?

  All right. Let's do it.

• 3:59:27Speaker 05

  Father, um, Lord, we, thank you for this opportunity to fellowship with Sean, to talk about you, Lord, uh, to talk about your grace, your forgiveness, um, how you interact in our lives and make it better and those that come to you and know you and lean into you. Um, just, it just makes life so much better. Um, thank you for this time and opportunity. Lord, we, all the, all the glory goes to you, Lord. In Jesus' name we pray.

• 3:59:56Shawn Ryan?

  Amen.

• 3:59:58Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Chris.

• 4:00:00Speaker 05

  All right, brother.

• 4:00:02Shawn Ryan?

  I know we're missing a lot, but that is a hell of a fucking story, man.

• 4:00:06Speaker 05

  Well, thank you.

• 4:00:07Shawn Ryan?

  It was an honor.

• 4:00:08Speaker 05

  Dude, my honor, man. I, I sit in this chair, I feel like a poser. Man, you've had, Cody, you've had some, some amazing people that have sat in this chair, brother. I'm very humbled to, to have the opportunity to talk to you. So thank you. I appreciate it too.

• 4:00:22Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you're one of them.

• 4:00:23Speaker 05

  Well, thank you, brother. Appreciate that.

• 4:00:24Shawn Ryan?

  God bless, man.

• 4:00:25Speaker 05

  Bless you, brother.

• 4:00:38Shawn Ryan?

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