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Speaker 4: As you are now listening to True Murder, the most
Speaker 4: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
Speaker 4: have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK.
Speaker 4: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 4: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 4: your host journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 6: Good Evening. Sons of Anarchy meets to Departed in this
Speaker 6: fast paced, high wire act memoir from former ATF agent
Speaker 6: Ken Krok, the first federal agent in history to go
Speaker 6: under cover and successfully infiltrate the infamous and infamously violent
Speaker 6: Pagan Motorcycle Club, a white supremacist biker gang. Longtime ATF agent,
Speaker 6: kan Crok had earned the right to coast to the
Speaker 6: end of a story career, having routinely gone undercover to
Speaker 6: apprehend white supremacists, gun runners, and gang members. But after
Speaker 6: a chance encounter with an associate of the Pagan Motorcycle
Speaker 6: Gang created an opening, he transformed himself into Slam, a
Speaker 6: monstrous axe handle wielding enforcer whose duty was to protect
Speaker 6: the leadership mother club at all costs. He befriended the
Speaker 6: club's most violent and criminally insane members and lived among
Speaker 6: them for two years, covertly building a case that would
Speaker 6: eventually take down the top members of the gang in
Speaker 6: a massive federal prosecution, even as he risked his marriage,
Speaker 6: his sanity, and his life. With today's law enforcement largely
Speaker 6: moving toward the comparative safety of cyber operations, he became
Speaker 6: one of the last of its kind, a master class
Speaker 6: in old school tactics that mark Croke as a dying
Speaker 6: breed of undercover agent and became legendary in law enforcement. Now,
Speaker 6: for the first time, Croke tells the story of his
Speaker 6: terrifying undercover life in the Pagans the Unspeakable, Violence, extremism, drugs,
Speaker 6: and disgusting Rituals. Written with best selling crime writer Dave Wedge,
Speaker 6: and utilizing the exclusive cooperation of those who lived the
Speaker 6: case with him, as well as thousands of pages of
Speaker 6: court files and hours of surveillance tapes and photos, Croke
Speaker 6: delivers a frightening, nail biting account of the secretive and
Speaker 6: brutal biker underworld. The book that we're featuring this evening
Speaker 6: is Riding with Evil, taking down the notorious Pagan motorcycle
Speaker 6: gang with my special guest, former ATF agent and author
Speaker 6: Ken Croke. Welcome to the program and thank you so
Speaker 6: much for this interview, Ken Croke.
Speaker 3: Thanks San, happy to be here.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for joining us this evening with
Speaker 6: this incredible tale. Let's get right to this, uh. In
Speaker 6: two thousand and eight, you write that a call came
Speaker 6: into the field office, the Boston office of the Bureau
Speaker 6: of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ATF where you were
Speaker 6: a supervisor. This person had a connection with the Devil's Disciples,
Speaker 6: which was a support group of the Pagans. Tell us
Speaker 6: what this person had to say, this Jake, and what
Speaker 6: did he have to say and how you initially got involved.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jacob come in and had met with a one
Speaker 3: of the agents or coaching from the Boston office and
Speaker 3: had said that he had some information on the Devil's
Speaker 3: Disciples and that he knew they were recruiting new members
Speaker 3: and that he knew they were involved in some illegal
Speaker 3: activities and he thought that he could do some work
Speaker 3: or introduce an undercover agent into into that group. You know,
Speaker 3: if if that's something that law enforcement would want.
Speaker 6: Now, the person that took that call is a person
Speaker 6: named Eric Katchian, and he was an agent that took
Speaker 6: the call you.
Speaker 3: He spoke to you.
Speaker 6: Why did he ask you? What was your background that
Speaker 6: he was interested in? And tell us about this conversation
Speaker 6: you had regarding this.
Speaker 3: Sure, So early in my career I started in Los Angeles, California,
Speaker 3: and so I worked a lot of gang investigations. In particularly,
Speaker 3: I worked a lot of motorcycle gangs, and so I
Speaker 3: was involved investigations with the Mongols and the Vargos and
Speaker 3: some others, and the agents in Boston when I was
Speaker 3: transferred back to Boston eventually knew that I had this background.
Speaker 3: There hadn't been a lot of outlaw motorcycle gang investigations
Speaker 3: in the Boston office, and so when this information came in,
Speaker 3: you know, part of coaching's due diligence was, well, let
Speaker 3: me talk to a resource who knows a bit about
Speaker 3: you know, these gangs, and to find out if this story,
Speaker 3: you know, matches, it has credibility. You know the structure
Speaker 3: of gangs and and kind of their makeup and in
Speaker 3: hearing about different things they may be doing. It's kind
Speaker 3: of a validity check if you will, like, does this
Speaker 3: make sense? Wese work these types of investigations.
Speaker 6: Right, So you brought this Jake character in, or they
Speaker 6: brought Jake in and they first off to vet him.
Speaker 6: They gave him a polygraph test any passed, So from there,
Speaker 6: so from there, how do you get involved in what's
Speaker 6: this of this faithful event that happens with this Boston mic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's one of those things where you
Speaker 3: can plan out, you know, all sorts of things in
Speaker 3: different ways to go about investigations, and then you know
Speaker 3: somebody else has a plan for you. And in this
Speaker 3: particular instance, you know, Jake passes the polygraph, so that's
Speaker 3: step number one, Like, Okay, this person isn't coming in,
Speaker 3: they're not lying about this or you know, trying to
Speaker 3: set up an undercover agent. There's all sorts of different,
Speaker 3: you know, reasons why somebody could come in a false
Speaker 3: info and so you pass that first test, and then
Speaker 3: second test is like, all right, if somebody's going to
Speaker 3: go on to cover. And again, it was never the
Speaker 3: intent to do a long term investigation, undercover investigation that is.
Speaker 3: But even if it was going to be short term,
Speaker 3: you had to look at the person Jake, and but
Speaker 3: you also have to look at the surroundings. So if
Speaker 3: I was going to be the undercover, and initially that
Speaker 3: was not the plan, but if I was, if Jake
Speaker 3: has a wife or adult children or whatever that is
Speaker 3: in his life and they're involved in this setting, right,
Speaker 3: then you have to check that part out too, because
Speaker 3: you can't just have somebody that's never met anybody in
Speaker 3: his family. You know, if your backstory is that you're
Speaker 3: with them, then then they would have to know you.
Speaker 3: So I needed to meet in this case, it was
Speaker 3: just his wife to see what her makeup was. Was
Speaker 3: this somebody who's going to be able to stand up
Speaker 3: to this, you know type of work?
Speaker 6: And she passed the test? And then what happens with Boston,
Speaker 6: Bob and Jake and how are you involved?
Speaker 3: So it starts with Boston Mike, and so Boston Mike,
Speaker 3: you know, I was I was actually helping. It was
Speaker 3: it was freezing cold and there was a hot water
Speaker 3: heater that froze up. It's it's kind of a long,
Speaker 3: convolute story, but anyways, when we were helping to get
Speaker 3: the hot water heat going, Boston Mike shows up and
Speaker 3: seen and introduces himself, and he knows Jake and so
Speaker 3: they're talking and then eventually, you know, I start talking
Speaker 3: and just kind of hanging out, you know, bs in
Speaker 3: a bit, and it comes up that they were having
Speaker 3: a party in the you know, upcoming weeks, and he's like, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, if your body wants to come along, you know,
Speaker 3: have him come along. So it was an opportunity. It
Speaker 3: wasn't a planned opportunity. It wasn't like, oh, let's set
Speaker 3: the stage and you know, so we can do this introduction.
Speaker 3: It just happened, which you know, at the time you
Speaker 3: didn't know how far this was going to go. But
Speaker 3: it was like, okay, well it makes sense now that
Speaker 3: I'm going to be at least the one to go initially.
Speaker 3: And I and I, you know, the plan at that
Speaker 3: time was okay, I'll start it and then I'll hand
Speaker 3: it off to somebody else. But you know, his events turning,
Speaker 3: that wasn't an option.
Speaker 6: So you report back to Katchian and there's at least
Speaker 6: a short term surveillance plan set up. And you just
Speaker 6: said that things moved really fast right after that. Normally
Speaker 6: the kinds of precautions you do as an undercover agent.
Speaker 6: It was interesting to read about it, and you talk
Speaker 6: about the term backstopping. So explain everything that normally you
Speaker 6: would have done, and in this regard you already had
Speaker 6: an alias and from previous undercover work. Tell us what
Speaker 6: all goes into building that kind of as you call
Speaker 6: it backstopping.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we keep in the book we outlined some
Speaker 3: of it, but it's really the common sense spot. There's
Speaker 3: other things that are furthering more in each other that
Speaker 3: we don't talk about just because we're not going to
Speaker 3: give up the technology or the techniques. But the point
Speaker 3: is is that if you're going to take on the
Speaker 3: identity or the persona, just simple things. You know, Dan,
Speaker 3: you get jumping out at your house. You know, you
Speaker 3: have a driver's license. You have these things that seem
Speaker 3: simple because they're legit. You got them just by living
Speaker 3: your life. But when you have an undercover life not diseasey.
Speaker 3: And I know most people would love to see no
Speaker 3: jump mails show up in their mailbox. But if you
Speaker 3: don't have any jump mail, that looks weird. If you
Speaker 3: don't have flyers outside your house, those kind of things.
Speaker 3: And so you have to create this persona and so
Speaker 3: that it becomes as closer as real as it can
Speaker 3: to what a real person is and that those real
Speaker 3: types of things, solicitations and things like that would happen
Speaker 3: to that person because these organizations they look for that.
Speaker 3: You know, when you get for or father enough in
Speaker 3: you're just showing up at one party, nobody's checking it
Speaker 3: in that stuff, you show up in a couple of parties,
Speaker 3: nobody's checking it. But all of a sudden you're joining
Speaker 3: one of these kind of elite organizations, if you will,
Speaker 3: They are going to check this stuff, and you better
Speaker 3: have the stuff lined up in order to get through
Speaker 3: because if you get compromised, you know who knows where
Speaker 3: it goes from there.
Speaker 6: So you go to this party and it's not really
Speaker 6: a party, as you say, and they're trying to find
Speaker 6: out information about you. So who are the people that
Speaker 6: you meet right away? And what is the talk? Almost
Speaker 6: right away.
Speaker 3: There's you know again they're they're trying to saying that
Speaker 3: they're trying to, you know, ask figure out who I
Speaker 3: am and all that. It sounds more diligent or more
Speaker 3: purposeful than it really is. You know, it's like anybody
Speaker 3: who goes to a party like these these guys aren't
Speaker 3: saying out of the gate like oh hey, this guy here, Ken,
Speaker 3: we want to bring him in and make him one
Speaker 3: of us.
Speaker 1: Like that.
Speaker 3: That wasn't what the intent of this was. I was
Speaker 3: just invited to a party. But for me it's a
Speaker 3: job and it's an opportunity to assess who's who. And
Speaker 3: then for the others it's you know, for them, it's
Speaker 3: just like, hey, what, you know, what's this? What's this
Speaker 3: guy about? You know? What? What is he? You know?
Speaker 3: Is he a good guy to hang out with? You know?
Speaker 3: I don't think they're looking that far down the road
Speaker 3: where they're like, oh, hey, we want to make this
Speaker 3: guy one of us.
Speaker 6: Okay, So tell us as you as you read in
Speaker 6: the book a little bit about the pagan history as
Speaker 6: a one of the five major bike games in in
Speaker 6: the world, and also the idea of who Jake was
Speaker 6: in terms of you say, there's many ways to be
Speaker 6: involved with the outlaw biker gangs, and some of one
Speaker 6: of them them is a prospect. But explain some of
Speaker 6: the process to us and the little history of the organization.
Speaker 3: Sure, so this is particularly now a lot of the
Speaker 3: Alsac gangs are set in it's very similar structure. So
Speaker 3: this was Devil's Societles but the Pagans have their own structure,
Speaker 3: but they're all, you know, somewhat similar, and so they
Speaker 3: have hired so you basically when you start and you're accepted,
Speaker 3: it's just a person that they like. Then it's what
Speaker 3: they call a hangaround face and so and that hang
Speaker 3: around face could go from six months to six years.
Speaker 3: You just don't know how long that part of the
Speaker 3: process goes. But what that means is you can go
Speaker 3: to events, you can go to parties. You're not certainly
Speaker 3: not involved in any of the criminal activity. You're not
Speaker 3: going to church and I'll explain what church is in
Speaker 3: a minute. You're not you're just outside. You're some of
Speaker 3: you can hang around, but they're not sharing anything, you know,
Speaker 3: particularly illegal activities with you. From there, you may get
Speaker 3: asked if if you wanted to be a part of
Speaker 3: this thing and that, and that's exactly what they said me.
Speaker 3: And if you agree, they put you into this prospecting phase.
Speaker 3: Prospecting is nothing anybody wants to do. It's it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's a horrible period of time. But what it is is,
Speaker 3: you know, the gang is saying, okay, you're going to
Speaker 3: give us all your information. We're going to do our
Speaker 3: background checking. Each game does it differently, and you are
Speaker 3: then going to go into this prospect phase. And for
Speaker 3: the Pagans it's at least six months long, and in
Speaker 3: the in the Pagans, you are a prospect for the
Speaker 3: Pagan Nation is what they call it. So it's not
Speaker 3: to a specific chapter, and basically you are indentured to
Speaker 3: the game. You are on call twenty four to seven.
Speaker 3: You do whatever they tell you to do, and a
Speaker 3: lot of it is grountwork. There are all sorts of
Speaker 3: history rules, all of that you have to learn and
Speaker 3: and you have to do your best not to deviate
Speaker 3: or screw up on these rules, and certain things can
Speaker 3: happen to you during that time. One of the things
Speaker 3: you have to do is you carry these bags full
Speaker 3: of all sorts of stuff, extra cigarettes, you know, spark plugs,
Speaker 3: light bulb like. You have to have all this stuff
Speaker 3: on you, and any member at any time could say, hey, prospect,
Speaker 3: you know, give me a cigarette, or a prospect give
Speaker 3: me a you know, I need a spark plut for
Speaker 3: my bike, whatever it is. And there was actually a
Speaker 3: list of things you had to have on and if
Speaker 3: you screwed up, if they asked you a question, you
Speaker 3: know the answer if you didn't. If they asked your
Speaker 3: cigarette you didn't have one. Whatever it is, there's a
Speaker 3: couple different ways they would deal with it. One of
Speaker 3: the things you had to carry on you is a
Speaker 3: calendar and you had to mark off your days as
Speaker 3: a prospect, your goal getting to one eighty. But there
Speaker 3: was no guarantee at one eighty you were going to
Speaker 3: become a member. That was just the general time when
Speaker 3: that could happen. And so if you screwed out, they
Speaker 3: could add days to your prospect or weeks, which is horrible.
Speaker 3: Or they would bangcheck you, which is basically they basically
Speaker 3: give you a palm strike to the head, or they
Speaker 3: could just simply throw you up, depending on the severity
Speaker 3: of what you do. So you're under that du rest
Speaker 3: the entire time. I mean, you know there were prospects
Speaker 3: that were beaten with ax aams. It escalates depending on
Speaker 3: what the screw ups are. After the prospecting case, if
Speaker 3: you were to get through it, then you become a
Speaker 3: probationary patch member and that period lasts for a year.
Speaker 3: So your patch and so you have your colors and
Speaker 3: you can attend different events. And then within the club structure,
Speaker 3: you will have the chapter president who runs the chapter,
Speaker 3: and there's certain signifiers on their colors that allow you
Speaker 3: to know that they're the chapter president. There's Sergeant Arms,
Speaker 3: who is the second rank highest rank in a chapter.
Speaker 3: There is a vice president, but the vice president's really
Speaker 3: only status is if the president gets killed or goes
Speaker 3: to jail, then there's a treasurer. And then some chapters
Speaker 3: will be a second term. And then above each chapter
Speaker 3: is what they call the Mother Club. And the Mother
Speaker 3: Club is made up of and so it's almost like
Speaker 3: its own chapter, but it oversees the entire pay, the nation,
Speaker 3: the entire game, and each Mother Club member would have
Speaker 3: so there'd be a national president, national vice president, National
Speaker 3: Slejeant of Arms, and then but each one of those
Speaker 3: members and in theory mother club would have thirteen members.
Speaker 3: It oftentimes didn't, but in theory would, and those Mother
Speaker 3: Club members would have areas of responsibility. So you'd have
Speaker 3: a Mother Club member that maybe over New York, one
Speaker 3: over Northern New Jersey, one over Pennsylvania, or they might
Speaker 3: divide Pennsylvania. So I'll pause there.
Speaker 6: Dane a couple of the things that demonstrate and illustrate
Speaker 6: all the kinds of things that you talk about, this
Speaker 6: pagan world that you are were going to enter into soon.
Speaker 6: The guys that you met, Boston Mike and our pardon me, Boston,
Speaker 6: Bob and Billy Jacobson. Bob tells you a little bit
Speaker 6: about you talked about the rules and the rules that
Speaker 6: had to be obeyed or else harsh consequences. And Bob
Speaker 6: tells you about Billy sleeping with I think it's a
Speaker 6: mother club member, but at least a pagan member's wife
Speaker 6: or girlfriend. And then also was very important. It's right
Speaker 6: at the very beginning, whether when you're considering and your
Speaker 6: ATF is considering whether you should be able to go
Speaker 6: do this, and you see the opportunity that that presents itself.
Speaker 6: Soon enough, there's a person named Bennett, and so you
Speaker 6: talk about Bob and Billy, and you talk about a
Speaker 6: young man named Bennett and Hogman. So tell us a
Speaker 6: little bit about this Bennett and Hogman and Bob and Billy.
Speaker 3: Sure, there's a lot there in all unpackage piece piece,
Speaker 3: So Boston, Mike in so in the in the Devil's Disciples,
Speaker 3: in the in the chapter that they were in, you
Speaker 3: have Billy Jacson, Boston My Boston Bob, and a few others,
Speaker 3: and there was talk although I wasn't, you know, part
Speaker 3: of this talk early on, because again I wasn't one
Speaker 3: of them, and I wasn't certainly in their plans to
Speaker 3: patch over to become Pagans. But there was talk that
Speaker 3: the Pagans are going to open a chapter in Massachusetts
Speaker 3: and that these some of the members of the Devil's
Speaker 3: Cycles were going to patch over, which means basically they
Speaker 3: would turn in their callers to their gang and they
Speaker 3: would take on Pagan colors so they wouldn't have to
Speaker 3: go through prospecting. Doesn't happen often, but sometimes when they're
Speaker 3: going to open a full chapter of regular outlaw motorcycle
Speaker 3: game members, they'll do it. So the plan was that
Speaker 3: these five individuals were going to start this chapter up
Speaker 3: in Massachusetts. So the interesting piece of all that was
Speaker 3: that you had Billion Jameson in Boston Bob. Both had qualities,
Speaker 3: both seem to have a following. So I kind of
Speaker 3: tried to stay in the middle and was successful at
Speaker 3: doing that. So I would spend time with Boston Bob
Speaker 3: and sometimes we meet a bar and hang out and
Speaker 3: we talk and he'd be like, yeah, you should, you know,
Speaker 3: think about doing this. And the other times i'd meet Billy,
Speaker 3: we meet down South Boston and we would go to
Speaker 3: some bars down there and we'd hang out and he'd
Speaker 3: be talking about how he was going to be running
Speaker 3: these things. At some point when right as I was
Speaker 3: supposed to be going down to meet the payments for
Speaker 3: the first time, they were going down for an event
Speaker 3: and it was actually a memorial event for Bennett. And
Speaker 3: I'll go back to explain what happened there, and they
Speaker 3: ended up going down on Friday night. I was supposed
Speaker 3: to meet them in Long Island on Saturday night, and
Speaker 3: what had happened is and Billy had said that he
Speaker 3: had hooked up with a female down there. He never
Speaker 3: got specifical about who it was or who they might
Speaker 3: have been tied to. And I don't even know that
Speaker 3: he knew it at the time. I do know that
Speaker 3: Boston Bob had warned him and said, you should not
Speaker 3: be screing around with any of these ladies down here,
Speaker 3: because you don't know who they're tied to, and you
Speaker 3: are going to get yourself into some trouble. And Billy,
Speaker 3: you know, he just he you know, we Billy was
Speaker 3: doing what Billy was gonna do, and he didn't listen.
Speaker 3: So as they they went down that that Friday night,
Speaker 3: and they were at a bar called Mobo's on Long Island,
Speaker 3: and they they were in there and and this female
Speaker 3: was there. And and again, you don't none of us
Speaker 3: ever knew the real story on what happened. I can
Speaker 3: tell you what Billy stated, and and then I can
Speaker 3: tell you what others had stated. But Billy, you know,
Speaker 3: walks in and is seen by this woman. And but
Speaker 3: but but Billy didn't see her, but she sees him.
Speaker 3: And so she makes a comment to her boyfriend, who
Speaker 3: happens to be the president of one of the New
Speaker 3: Jersey chapters, and says, hey, this guy over here, see
Speaker 3: him over there, he raped me some weeks ago. Now
Speaker 3: that may have happened. According to Boston Bob, he said
Speaker 3: it didn't happen, that they had had a conceptual relationship,
Speaker 3: but that she was panicking because of what her you know,
Speaker 3: new boyfriend would say. But I don't know, it could
Speaker 3: have happened either way. Billy walks into, you know, a situation.
Speaker 3: He doesn't even know it's gonna happen. So oftentimes illegal activity,
Speaker 3: particularly when you're in one of these biker bars, it
Speaker 3: happens in the bathrooms. And so the bathrooms, you know,
Speaker 3: you'll have there'll be people posted outside the bathrooms, and
Speaker 3: if somebody's in there selling drugs, buying drugs, using drugs,
Speaker 3: or you know, any meetings or whatever, that they'll block
Speaker 3: the door. So the Pagans will blocked the door and
Speaker 3: not allow folks in when their leadership was inside doing
Speaker 3: whatever they don't. So in this particular situation, Billy got
Speaker 3: summoned to the bathroom, and so he's thinking, this is
Speaker 3: about the new chapter. This is great. You know, they're
Speaker 3: probably gonna name me the president. You know, this is
Speaker 3: all good. And so he walks through the door and
Speaker 3: several Pagans are inside the bathroom floor to the exact
Speaker 3: and Dan Lesia beating him, and and so you know, Peter,
Speaker 3: and again I was not there. This is what I
Speaker 3: was told was that They then tell Boston Bob, you know,
Speaker 3: get the scumbag you know, off the floor, get him
Speaker 3: back to the hotel. Keep him there. We're gonna come,
Speaker 3: you know, to the hotel. We're gonna cut his stick
Speaker 3: off and throw him the dumpster. So Tracy helps get
Speaker 3: this guy off the floor. Boston Bob and Tracy walk
Speaker 3: him out, get him into the car. Boston Bob leaves,
Speaker 3: and you know, very studidly realizes, like, if I go
Speaker 3: back to this hotel, they're gonna come kill this guy.
Speaker 3: I left Boston with this guy. Everyone, a bunch of
Speaker 3: people know I left with him. He shows up dead
Speaker 3: in a dumpster. This is probably gonna come back on me.
Speaker 3: He opts not to go back to the hotel. Now,
Speaker 3: maybe he was trying to do the citizen duty and
Speaker 3: not get Billy killed either. But he drives, you know,
Speaker 3: straight off Long Island, drives back up to Boston. He
Speaker 3: basically dumps Billy at the hospital, basically just you know,
Speaker 3: pulls up to the front of the hospital, leaves him
Speaker 3: at the door, and heads off. And and Billy that's
Speaker 3: the end of you know, Billy. I did have one
Speaker 3: interaction with him. I get a phone call in the
Speaker 3: middle of the night, I get actually get a text,
Speaker 3: and it's basically the trips off. We'll explain later. And
Speaker 3: so at that point, I'm like, well, what's this about.
Speaker 3: And I'm trying to reach Billy. I'm trying to reach
Speaker 3: Boston Bob not having any success. At some point, Billy
Speaker 3: does call me and we had one very short conversation,
Speaker 3: and it was his thing was, get out, don't do this,
Speaker 3: get out, why you can, I'm out, You're never gonna
Speaker 3: see me again. Phone goes dead and Trudu's word never
Speaker 3: never saw him again. Now I know, Dan, you had
Speaker 3: another part of that question, and that went on so
Speaker 3: long that I've forgot. It was the the Bennett murder,
Speaker 3: so you know, get prior to me becoming affiliated with
Speaker 3: the the gang, prior to me ever setting foot on
Speaker 3: Long Island, there was an event and a party and
Speaker 3: in a room where Hogman and Bennett were there there
Speaker 3: Bennett was killed. And there's two different variations of what happened.
Speaker 3: The variations were one that he was, you know, he
Speaker 3: was using his long knife and and oftentimes they would
Speaker 3: do this, used a long knife, scoop out some coke,
Speaker 3: snort the coke, and then sheath the knife, and that
Speaker 3: he had passed out, fell forward onto the knife, piercing
Speaker 3: you know, through his eye and his brain stem and
Speaker 3: killing himself. So basically he killed himself. The other variation
Speaker 3: is that Hogman was passed out and that Bennett's saw
Speaker 3: an opportunity to you know, use a little bit of
Speaker 3: Hogman's coke. Hogman woke up, kicked Bennett in the back
Speaker 3: of the head, driving the knife through his eye and
Speaker 3: his brainstem and killing. Part of my endeavors is I
Speaker 3: is I, you know, as I was moving forward this
Speaker 3: investigation was to get whatever information I could on this death,
Speaker 3: to see if we could put together what actually happened
Speaker 3: in that room. Forensically it didn't line up. There was
Speaker 3: there was reason to believe that there was more to
Speaker 3: it than just falling over onto a knife in killing yourself,
Speaker 3: and so that was something that I set out to
Speaker 3: do during you know, of course of the investigation.
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Speaker 6: slash murder. Now, Ken we were just talking about you're
Speaker 6: on the precipice of joining this. You talk, you have
Speaker 6: some allies. You have a state Attorney Mike Sullivan in
Speaker 6: your corner, and you also have Andy Anderson at the
Speaker 6: ATF that is supportive of what you're going to do. Now,
Speaker 6: before we start telling everybody about your journey into the
Speaker 6: being a prospect with with the Pagans, this might be
Speaker 6: a little bit out of order, But what are the
Speaker 6: things that you are What is the main thing you
Speaker 6: needed from an permission for from this agency for this
Speaker 6: to be effective in being a prospect and working your
Speaker 6: way up to the higherarchy of the Pagans.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, part of part of any of these investigations,
Speaker 3: particularly long term undercover investigations. First of all, they don't
Speaker 3: happen that often, and the approval levels go to the
Speaker 3: highest spots within the government. But in this case, you know,
Speaker 3: we're fortunate because Mike Sullivan was the US Attorney. He
Speaker 3: also happened to be the acting director of ATF at
Speaker 3: the time, so he was wearing two hats, which was
Speaker 3: really helpful. And Andy Anderson was especially in charge of
Speaker 3: the Boston Field division. Both these guys are extremely supportive,
Speaker 3: but you know they wanted to be brief. They want
Speaker 3: to know, hey, what's the goal here? Like And for me,
Speaker 3: you know, again, it was never the plan that I
Speaker 3: was going to be doing the long term undercover, at
Speaker 3: least out of the out of the gate. We went
Speaker 3: further and further down the road, it was apparent that
Speaker 3: it was not going to be an opportunity to swap
Speaker 3: somebody else in there. But you know, even at this stage,
Speaker 3: we're not one hundred percent there yet. But we knew
Speaker 3: what the investigation, what we were going for, and I
Speaker 3: knew that for me to be involved in it, I
Speaker 3: wasn't looking to you know, bust a bunch of people
Speaker 3: for stolen motorcycle parts and some things like that. That
Speaker 3: if we're going to do this, we're going to do
Speaker 3: it right, and we're going to do it and infiltration
Speaker 3: and try to get to the highest levels of the group.
Speaker 3: Understanding that all sort of things can happen on any
Speaker 3: single day that can end the investigation, whether it's being
Speaker 3: your identities compromise, or an event that's going to take
Speaker 3: place that you can't participate in. So part of this
Speaker 3: was to get the approvals to do the things that
Speaker 3: you would need to do, and so there's internal approves
Speaker 3: you get through atf and then there's you know, approves
Speaker 3: that you would get with US attorneys. Obviously also a
Speaker 3: willingness for them to prosecute this type of investigation, because
Speaker 3: what's the point if you're going to do all this
Speaker 3: and there's non interested in prosecuting And that was never
Speaker 3: in doubt. They had a large interest in prosecuting this group,
Speaker 3: in preventing them from spreading any further.
Speaker 6: So you talk about being a prospect, and so you
Speaker 6: gain the trust of these people very quickly. The for example,
Speaker 6: the President J R. Everling, and he invited you to
Speaker 6: the communion, to the first communion of his of his son,
Speaker 6: so impressive stuff. And you said, at every one of
Speaker 6: these points, at every one of these events, every thing
Speaker 6: that you were invited to, they use it as an
Speaker 6: opportunity to find out more about you, like they would
Speaker 6: find out about anyone. But you've found out soon enough
Speaker 6: what they were obviously in a war with the Hell's Angels,
Speaker 6: that's one thing we didn't mention. But so soon enough
Speaker 6: you realize what they wanted you for specifically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this goes on. You know again, we say, you know,
Speaker 3: we build the trust quickly, and I guess you'd have
Speaker 3: to define quickly, but for me, it seemed like it
Speaker 3: was an eternity. But you're going back and forth and you're,
Speaker 3: you know, tending different events, you're staying at different you know, places,
Speaker 3: and you're get to know and different people, and you're
Speaker 3: being social. And part of this is you're, you know,
Speaker 3: you're really telling them what they want to hear, and
Speaker 3: you know, you're invited certain things and you go to
Speaker 3: these things and so you're you're building up that kind
Speaker 3: of it's like any anything else, any time you meet
Speaker 3: anybody else. You know, you don't know that you really
Speaker 3: sizing somebody up, but you are, you know, you're kind
Speaker 3: of a value. Is this type of person I want
Speaker 3: to hang out and beer with? Is this somebody that
Speaker 3: you know I want to become friends with? Or you know,
Speaker 3: is this somebody that you know really has no qualities
Speaker 3: that I'm interested in. So that's kind of that dance.
Speaker 3: You know, it's all one sided because I know what
Speaker 3: I'm meeting with and I know what my objective objective is,
Speaker 3: but they don't. And so convincing them that you are
Speaker 3: something that you're not, which is one of them and
Speaker 3: so that process goes on, and then as you're doing that,
Speaker 3: they are trying to find out about you, so like, hey,
Speaker 3: where do you live, where do you work? You know,
Speaker 3: what do you do? You know, have you ridden with
Speaker 3: any other? Game? Like you know, there's and it happens gradually,
Speaker 3: and some were very diligent in doing Some of them
Speaker 3: it just be you know, they just have a regular conversations.
Speaker 3: They don't really care. Others were not. Others were there
Speaker 3: to check your story. And you know, one in particular
Speaker 3: who ultimately became my sponsor was Roadblock, And he was
Speaker 3: very diligent in asking a lot of questions. And he
Speaker 3: would ask a lot of questions and then re asked
Speaker 3: them after some time. And I often get asked, you know, hey,
Speaker 3: how hard was to keep everything straight? And I tell you,
Speaker 3: and I use this analogy. You know, if Dan, if
Speaker 3: you told me you went to you know, if I
Speaker 3: asked you, hey, tell me a lie about where you
Speaker 3: went to dinner and who you were with last night,
Speaker 3: What did you eat, what restaurant? What was the interior
Speaker 3: looking like? So you'd be fine. You would tell me
Speaker 3: a lie and you would lay it all out. You know,
Speaker 3: I had a steak. It was meaning, well, you know,
Speaker 3: I went to this restaurant and so forth, and that's fine,
Speaker 3: that's easy. But then let a week go by and
Speaker 3: I come back and say, hey, Dan, you know last
Speaker 3: week you're talking about this restaurant and what did you
Speaker 3: have to eat and how did you have it cooked?
Speaker 3: And that's the hard part because it's not a real memory.
Speaker 3: There's no natural recall back to an event. You have
Speaker 3: to go back to a line, and keeping that straight
Speaker 3: is very difficult. And so that's and that's and they
Speaker 3: know the weakness to that as well, and so Roadblock
Speaker 3: would constantly be testing you with those things. And of
Speaker 3: course the further you get in the process, the more
Speaker 3: documentation in things that you had to answer, Like there
Speaker 3: was a formal process of a whole lot of background
Speaker 3: information they asked, and they went and checked out, and
Speaker 3: they regularly checked up on me throughout the investigation. They
Speaker 3: did some bounce the they you know, I would set
Speaker 3: my my bags up on my bike so I would
Speaker 3: know if anybody went into them, and uh, and they
Speaker 3: regularly went into my bags and rifle throne and see
Speaker 3: what was in there. So yeah, they do their homework.
Speaker 6: There.
Speaker 3: There's a reason why they'd never been infiltrated before because
Speaker 3: they're they're very secretive and they're very good at what
Speaker 3: they do. And that just means, you know that we
Speaker 3: had to raise our game.
Speaker 6: You talk about that, and I know I'm jumping ahead here,
Speaker 6: but we won't be able to go into a fraction
Speaker 6: of the stories that really make up this incredible book,
Speaker 6: but to demonstrate the vetting process and to testing and
Speaker 6: the mistrust that they have initially and that is why
Speaker 6: they haven't been infiltrated till you came around. Talk about this.
Speaker 6: They talked about a drug dealer, a black drug dealer
Speaker 6: that had given them a problem. What did they want
Speaker 6: you to do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they had if it's if it's what I
Speaker 3: think you're talking about, they had they had come to me.
Speaker 3: So I just courchased a bounce of crack cocaine from
Speaker 3: Hogman and his source. And Hagman was armed, you know,
Speaker 3: with the fire when we were doing this transaction. And
Speaker 3: when it was done, he's like, hey, bro, you know,
Speaker 3: hang around, and so so I hang around in the
Speaker 3: crack dealer had left and hey, listen, and I've got
Speaker 3: some you know, heavy work that I need you to
Speaker 3: help me with. And Hogman had just broken his foot
Speaker 3: in like five places. There was a pagan that they
Speaker 3: that was out bad meeting. They kicked him out and
Speaker 3: out bad meetings, said no Pagan college. It can't be
Speaker 3: around pagans. If you see him, you're supposed to beat him.
Speaker 3: So Hagman had literally kicked this guy so hard he
Speaker 3: shouted his own foot in five places. And so he's like, hey,
Speaker 3: I need some help in this this heavy work. There's
Speaker 3: you know a guy that we killed Upstate tracing in
Speaker 3: him tracing it is another member of up State. It
Speaker 3: was actually a president of the Upstate chapter. And you know,
Speaker 3: we buried the body and we need to move the body.
Speaker 3: And and I'm like, why are you going to move
Speaker 3: bodies like the landsman sold where it was at. We're
Speaker 3: afraid that they're gonna start building, they gonna find it.
Speaker 3: Tracy's got a big lot where he lives. So we
Speaker 3: need some help and digging up the body, moving the
Speaker 3: body and reburying it. In my eye, bro, you know,
Speaker 3: just let me know where I went. And so a
Speaker 3: period of time goes by. You know, it didn't happen overnight,
Speaker 3: it did, You know? There was conversation about it. You know,
Speaker 3: I got recorded conversation about it, but there was no
Speaker 3: definitive found like, hey, we're gonna go do it next Saturday.
Speaker 3: It was anything like that. And so there were some
Speaker 3: you know, in in atfore like ah, it's probably never
Speaker 3: gonna happen. There were others who were very concerned about
Speaker 3: it happening. There were others who were very concerned that
Speaker 3: this could be a setup, that they figured out something
Speaker 3: about me or who I was, and that you know,
Speaker 3: because this isn't the cat Skills. That's part of that
Speaker 3: was the bodies in the Catskills. And it was in
Speaker 3: the middle of the winter in this particular area of
Speaker 3: the Cat Skills. There's virtually no one up there during
Speaker 3: this time. So you know, fast forward. And also it
Speaker 3: was like going to jump in my truck and Hogman
Speaker 3: and I we're going to take a ride up there.
Speaker 3: And so, you know, I met Hogman. He's got a
Speaker 3: gone on his waistband, which wasn't he didn't always have
Speaker 3: a gun on his waistban, but it wasn't completely unusual
Speaker 3: that he had gone his wastepan he gets in the truck.
Speaker 3: Hogman is a very about four hundred fifty pounds, very large, heman,
Speaker 3: and he pulls the gun out of his waist ban
Speaker 3: puts it in the club box for the ride up,
Speaker 3: which is a couple of hours. So we go up
Speaker 3: and he's laying out the story. He's like, yeah, you
Speaker 3: know this guy, you know, we ripped him for his drugs.
Speaker 3: You know, he just leave. He didn't. He got mouthed
Speaker 3: the killing him. You know. We we've wrapped him in
Speaker 3: a package, you know, and you know, we've cut off
Speaker 3: his hands and there's there was a hog farm, not
Speaker 3: farre and Tracy, you know, fed the hands to the hog,
Speaker 3: to the hogs. But we need to get this body
Speaker 3: back up. And I'm like, well, how long ago? And
Speaker 3: he's like, oh, you know, like six months ago. So
Speaker 3: I'm like okay. So he's like, yeah, we get to
Speaker 3: sing up. We're gonna more. So we get up there
Speaker 3: and you know, it's it's February, so in the Catskills
Speaker 3: it's freezing cold. So you know, I'm thinking, how are
Speaker 3: we going to dig a grave in the middle of
Speaker 3: the winter in the Catskills? And so Tracey's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: no worries, man, I already put down some rock solid
Speaker 3: and so he had treated the ground and let it
Speaker 3: sit and long home it works. So you have to
Speaker 3: dig a hole, Dan in the middle of the winter. Uh,
Speaker 3: that's that's the way to do it. So so we
Speaker 3: sit there in now it was daylight, and we've got
Speaker 3: to pick and we've got to shovel. Now hogman's got
Speaker 3: the broken legs, so he's sitting on the side and
Speaker 3: Tracy and I are digging this And if you had
Speaker 3: an aerial cam, it would almost be comical because at
Speaker 3: this point, you know, prior to going up there, ATF
Speaker 3: was very nervous about the fact that this now looked
Speaker 3: like it could be a setup, like I was going
Speaker 3: to dig my own grave. You know, they were gonna
Speaker 3: do whatever they're gonna do, and they were going to
Speaker 3: bury me out there in the middle of nowhere. So
Speaker 3: you know, I'm constantly It was the one time that
Speaker 3: ATF demanded that I wore a wire, and wires create
Speaker 3: risk because they can be detected. If they detected, you're
Speaker 3: not gonna be able to explain it. So but it was,
Speaker 3: it was, it was not negotiable. It was the one
Speaker 3: time I had to him, quite honestly, I wasn't you know,
Speaker 3: totally opposed to it because I wasn't sure what was
Speaker 3: going to happen. But if you had the aerial came
Speaker 3: and you were looking at the holes were digging this hole,
Speaker 3: it would almost be comical because it was like a dance.
Speaker 3: I did not want to turn my back to Tracy
Speaker 3: because I had to shovel when Tracy had to pick,
Speaker 3: and I didn't want him burying that in my back
Speaker 3: or my skull. And so we're moving around this hole
Speaker 3: and we're digging and it's just not It seems like
Speaker 3: it goes on forever. But eventually we get a couple
Speaker 3: of feet down the hole is done, and and against daylight,
Speaker 3: so you know, they're like, hey, let's go wait. You know,
Speaker 3: actually Tracy had some erons you wanted to run. So
Speaker 3: we're bouncing around believing not he actually was filing his
Speaker 3: taxes of all things, which I get Apparently bikers file
Speaker 3: some micros file the texts. So we go back to
Speaker 3: the house and in a hogman getting high and you know,
Speaker 3: hanging out there for it to get dark. Eventually gets dark.
Speaker 3: We head out and we take the plan was We're
Speaker 3: gonna take Tracy's truck in my truck. Hogman would drive
Speaker 3: my truck, Tracy and I would go in his truck.
Speaker 3: We'd pull up to the area, go into the woods,
Speaker 3: pick up the body, throw it in the back of
Speaker 3: my truck. Hogman would just immediately leave and we go
Speaker 3: in different directions and meet back at Tracy's use. So
Speaker 3: Tracy jumps out of the truck and again, now it's dark.
Speaker 3: There was a moon out that night, but it's now
Speaker 3: It's like, okay, the whole could have been a whole roote.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Now we're in the middle of the woods. You know,
Speaker 3: we take nothing of him to out there. Nobod's ever
Speaker 3: gonna find me. So he jumps out of his truck,
Speaker 3: and first of all, Tracy had a gun in his waistband,
Speaker 3: which Tracy very rarely had a gone on, so that
Speaker 3: had my you know, my alert up. And he jumps
Speaker 3: out of the truck, throws in the park, jumps out
Speaker 3: the truck and kind of darts into the wood. He's like,
Speaker 3: come on, he darts in the woods. But I got
Speaker 3: to get out of the truck on the other side,
Speaker 3: and I had some knee issues, so I wasn't moving
Speaker 3: super fastt but he's gone, he's into the woods. So
Speaker 3: I'm like, man, this really could be a setup. Now
Speaker 3: I did have a gun on me. And so we're
Speaker 3: moving to the woods and I can hear him, I
Speaker 3: can't really see him, but I'm keeping making sure to
Speaker 3: keep trees between me and you know, so at least
Speaker 3: I've got somewhere to kind of duck behind me and
Speaker 3: called out to him. He's like, oh, here, over here,
Speaker 3: you know, so you know I'm falling the voice, but
Speaker 3: keep these trees between me. And we come to kind
Speaker 3: of a clearing in the wood and I could see
Speaker 3: his hands because you know, there was enough for where
Speaker 3: the moon was shining through. I could see his hands
Speaker 3: and there was nothing in his hands. But there was
Speaker 3: a huge tree down on the ground. He was on
Speaker 3: the far side of that tree. So I approached the tree.
Speaker 3: I could see his hands, and he's like, hey, I
Speaker 3: dug it up earlier, so we have to deal with that.
Speaker 3: And and behind this it was a tark and it
Speaker 3: was you know, wrapped, you know, around a body, and
Speaker 3: he's like, come on, you know, grab grab your side.
Speaker 3: So I grab my side again. He's got nothing in
Speaker 3: his hands, so I'm not now no longer really worried
Speaker 3: about the gun we carry, you know, we carry the
Speaker 3: body out and it's as we're carrying it, you know,
Speaker 3: we're listening up because we're trying to get through the
Speaker 3: brush and and there's like liquid, uh it's it reads.
Speaker 3: It smells terrible and there's liquid just pouring out of
Speaker 3: the of the tar and it's poor, you know, depending
Speaker 3: on where you were on the hill, like as we
Speaker 3: were going up and down, its stilted more my way.
Speaker 3: The liquid, you know, come out on me, and I'm
Speaker 3: sure it came out on him too, So it's just,
Speaker 3: you know, really nasty going through. Finally, get out of
Speaker 3: the woods, thrown in the back of the truck. Hobb
Speaker 3: Man takes off. Tracy and I get into his truck.
Speaker 3: We both smell like ship and we drive back a
Speaker 3: different route, but we go back to his house. Once
Speaker 3: we get there, we reach in the back of the truck,
Speaker 3: grab me. I can feel like what feels like, aren't
Speaker 3: and you know, I'm lifting it up. He lifted it up.
Speaker 3: We bring it over, dig the hole and uh yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean I dig the hole. We we bring it
Speaker 3: over the hole, put it in the in the hole.
Speaker 3: We then dig, you know, put all the top soil
Speaker 3: back on, stomp it down, put more on the top
Speaker 3: so on, and try to make it look as natural
Speaker 3: as possible, which is pretty difficult in the middle of
Speaker 3: the winter. And and then we're done, and we head
Speaker 3: back into his house. Hogman and him get high again.
Speaker 3: Roadblock calls Hogman and Roadblock and Hogman we're half brothers.
Speaker 3: And and he goes, hey, have this conversation with these guys.
Speaker 3: And so we go in this back room and he says, hey,
Speaker 3: talk to my brother. He said, none of us are
Speaker 3: going to ever talk about this again, not amongst ourselves,
Speaker 3: not with anybody else. You know, we did what we
Speaker 3: had to do here, it's done, don't ever bring it
Speaker 3: up again. So it's like, okay, whatever. Now we jump
Speaker 3: back in the truck. We're heading back to New York City,
Speaker 3: and and you know, I got mudd all over me
Speaker 3: and my boots, you know whatever. And Hugman's openly talking about,
Speaker 3: you know, why and how and everything else, you know,
Speaker 3: the murder of the way down. So he clearly wasn't
Speaker 3: following us. But for me, part of it was like,
Speaker 3: all right, I now know that Roadblock is involved in
Speaker 3: this conspiracy. I don't know if he's involved in the
Speaker 3: murder itself or just a conspiracy to cover it up.
Speaker 3: But I know he knows because his brother was on
Speaker 3: the phone with him. They were talking, and then he
Speaker 3: relabeled his brother had said to him, so, you know,
Speaker 3: it's a dance like, you know, how am I gonna
Speaker 3: find out if Roadblock really did know when? And so
Speaker 3: we ended up going back to the clubhouse on Long
Speaker 3: Island and Roadblock was there along with JR. And we
Speaker 3: went in and JR. And made a comment about my
Speaker 3: boots because we were coming to month and and I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, we were up there taking care of that thing,
Speaker 3: trying to see you know, I was trying to list
Speaker 3: a conversation from them that they knew what we were
Speaker 3: doing and so forth, and Roadblock shot me a look
Speaker 3: like and he and he said, he goes, what was
Speaker 3: that you're gonna say? And it was clear like, hey,
Speaker 3: you were warned not to talking about this and check
Speaker 3: them out, And so I took the noticing and that
Speaker 3: was that. So yeah, I know that went on for
Speaker 3: a while, but it stopped the simples and stories.
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Speaker 6: Now, ken, we don't have too much time, but we were.
Speaker 6: Your success in being a prospect with the Pagans is
Speaker 6: benefited by the circumstances with these guys as well. We
Speaker 6: didn't get into the sad aage beating that you avoided
Speaker 6: just by luck. You were temporarily kicked out of being
Speaker 6: a prospect and and then brought back in, and that
Speaker 6: was just a sort of a technicality. Somebody that vouched
Speaker 6: for you was out, so then the people that you
Speaker 6: had built this relationship with the president Roadblock. His half
Speaker 6: brother Hogman is O'Davis the guy you were dealing drugs.
Speaker 6: You were you were able to deal drugs. You talk
Speaker 6: about the experience of being in a small town and
Speaker 6: and and the entire town paying homage to this, to
Speaker 6: this gang almost like celebrities, and them going into clubs,
Speaker 6: and you witnessing them paying protection, the bar owners, protection
Speaker 6: to the Pagans, basically them controlling this entire town. You
Speaker 6: also got a house thanks to atf And eventually all
Speaker 6: of these people trusted you enough incredibly to perform church,
Speaker 6: to have church, and tell us what church is, and
Speaker 6: tell us a little bit about this place that you
Speaker 6: had wired for sound, and what exactly the evidence that
Speaker 6: you gathered at this recorded church meeting of the Pagans.
Speaker 3: So church, and this is consistent with all our more
Speaker 3: psychic gangs, and how they conduct it is a little
Speaker 3: it could be different game to game, but church is
Speaker 3: where there's nothing holy about it. It is where they
Speaker 3: do all their criminal planning. It is a mandatory event.
Speaker 3: It usually happens on a weekly basis. Some some chapters
Speaker 3: will do it bi weekly, but at least once a
Speaker 3: week and in the this is where they talk about
Speaker 3: their criminal activities, what they're going to do, how they're
Speaker 3: going to do it. And there's rules about church, meaning
Speaker 3: there are no electronics allowed. So it started off with
Speaker 3: you know, you had to take your battery out of
Speaker 3: your cell phone, and then they realized that you know,
Speaker 3: they could have you know, there's other ways to use
Speaker 3: cell phones to transmit, so no electronics at all. There
Speaker 3: were times, depending on the subject matter, was we'd be
Speaker 3: stripped naked. We'd be sitting there naked and these some
Speaker 3: ugly human beings that you're sitting there with, so nothing
Speaker 3: enjoyable about that. There were other times where you know,
Speaker 3: the chapter besigeant arms had a r F detector which
Speaker 3: is used to you know, detect our signals, so if
Speaker 3: there's a transmitter in the room, it picks up on that,
Speaker 3: and they would want us to see if if we
Speaker 3: had if we had an r F detector, or if
Speaker 3: we had any sort of our signal within us. So
Speaker 3: they and they would you know, conduct these meetings, and
Speaker 3: in these meetings, you know, sometimes it was you know,
Speaker 3: you know, just regular internal chapter stuff and what was
Speaker 3: happening in their bars, and you know who they might
Speaker 3: have been extorting money from or what plans they were
Speaker 3: to do whatever criminal activity we're gonna do. Other times
Speaker 3: they're talking about this chapter of business. Some of them
Speaker 3: got more intent. Some of these church sessis can be
Speaker 3: much bigger, and they bring folks in Mother Club members
Speaker 3: or other chapters. And we were fortunate enough, you know,
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, I had an undercover house and over
Speaker 3: time built the trust with them, and it had a
Speaker 3: big basement that was better. Most of the time we
Speaker 3: had church in the president's garage and they would run
Speaker 3: like a heater to drawn out noise, and they were
Speaker 3: very surveilance conscious. But the basement, particularly in the winter
Speaker 3: winter of my house, was better and they liked it,
Speaker 3: and they built up the trucks and I had some
Speaker 3: hidden cameras and microphones in the basement. And so this
Speaker 3: one particular church session was a big one because they
Speaker 3: brought in all the chapter presidents from northern New Jersey
Speaker 3: and New York, and they also had a Mother Club
Speaker 3: member who was in charge of that entire era conno
Speaker 3: come to this church session, and they were particularly heated
Speaker 3: about the beating that you alluded to that had happened,
Speaker 3: which would have been me. If I hadn't got kicked
Speaker 3: out of the club, I would have been pulling guard duty.
Speaker 3: But because I got kicked out, ultimately I got back
Speaker 3: in obviously, but Roadblock was doing guard duty and the
Speaker 3: Hell's Angels rolled out a whole pack of them with
Speaker 3: their support clubs and they beat Roadblock near death, beat
Speaker 3: him a ballpeen hammers. He was air flighted out, and
Speaker 3: so the retaliation for that was being planned in this
Speaker 3: particular church session, along with some other criminal activity. And
Speaker 3: it was the first time ever that this had been
Speaker 3: caught on video. And not only was it caught on
Speaker 3: video and audio, but you could see us being RF detected,
Speaker 3: you know, during the meeting, and then you hear and
Speaker 3: see the conversation. So it was a it was a
Speaker 3: big part of the the criminal conspiracy for the prosecution.
Speaker 6: You talk about the again we don't have too much
Speaker 6: time to go into this, but it's incredible that you
Speaker 6: had a wife, they managed three daughters that were very,
Speaker 6: very understanding because you had to really go and and
Speaker 6: dedicate two years of your life to a different persona.
Speaker 6: And you talk about your your wife being involved with
Speaker 6: ATF recently before that, previously she was an agent at
Speaker 6: the time. So the thing is you had an extraordinary
Speaker 6: support team with your wife and you and your kids,
Speaker 6: so understanding. But after a couple of years and like
Speaker 6: you say, all this disgusting and hair raising events, there's
Speaker 6: so many times that you when you write about a
Speaker 6: recorder going off and making some noise. You're very very creative, luckily,
Speaker 6: for the things that you had to say and do
Speaker 6: spontaneously to keep your cover in this investigation. So it's
Speaker 6: a very exciting book that we really didn't go into
Speaker 6: all the Again, I can't even imagine the stress from
Speaker 6: the possibility that you might be found out. And these guys,
Speaker 6: as you say, were very very vigilant in trying to
Speaker 6: determine whether you said who you were as you had said.
Speaker 3: Yes, they certainly were. They had their processes and you
Speaker 3: had to go through it and they were constantly checking you.
Speaker 3: And you made, you know, reference to some of these things.
Speaker 3: And so there's skill sets involved in it. This technology,
Speaker 3: there's techniques, but there is just dumb luck and you
Speaker 3: know me not me being kicked out of the club
Speaker 3: for that period of time, the roadblock up beating another
Speaker 3: quick and I know it would come to the end,
Speaker 3: and we were on a run and and there was
Speaker 3: like thirty of us, and we've gotten back to the
Speaker 3: attacked president's house and he had sent myself and in
Speaker 3: Hogman out to pick something up. And now you know,
Speaker 3: I moved up in the ranks and I was now
Speaker 3: the sergeant arms within the chapter, so I was an officer,
Speaker 3: and so I was the highest ranking. So I highest
Speaker 3: ranking rides front left, so we pull out Hogman, who
Speaker 3: was the president, doesn't have any real status, but he
Speaker 3: pulls out around me because he was annoyed that I
Speaker 3: had become the sergeant arms over him, so he pulls
Speaker 3: off front left. Well I don't really care, right, I'm
Speaker 3: not a real biker. So we're going down the road
Speaker 3: and within a quarter mile, as we're making a turn,
Speaker 3: Hogman gets wiped out by a mini man splat out
Speaker 3: on the road. Actually codes out at one point that
Speaker 3: would have been me, uh, because it wasn't hard it's fault.
Speaker 3: It was actually many being driver's fault. But that's the
Speaker 3: kind of things that would happen during this investigation. And
Speaker 3: to your point on Strets, it was every day. You
Speaker 3: never every day that you had a plan. It never
Speaker 3: went according to plan. It might have the first ten
Speaker 3: minutes and then all of a sudden, some curveball was
Speaker 3: thrown at you. You're going to do this or they
Speaker 3: talked about this, and so you always had to be
Speaker 3: on your toes in adapt to that plan and hope
Speaker 3: it wasn't something that was going to have to shut
Speaker 3: down the case. It works.
Speaker 6: You gathered information successfully with Church and all these recordings,
Speaker 6: and it's very exciting when you talk about using opportunities
Speaker 6: like your cover story that you were a lobster a poacher,
Speaker 6: so that you could go and meet with the cover
Speaker 6: team to give them the kind of evidence from the
Speaker 6: recordings and any other and fill them in on what
Speaker 6: was going on. These guys had to live almost a
Speaker 6: similar life to you, depriving themselves of their normal family lives.
Speaker 6: You were successful with some very significant sentences, and you
Speaker 6: were successful with basically all the charges that you were
Speaker 6: intending to have these guys convicted of. Just tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about just the conclusion of the case itself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, the the takedown as we call it, it
Speaker 3: occurred an initiated with hell Boy. So hell Boy was
Speaker 3: an interesting character MMA fighter when he was strung out
Speaker 3: of meth extremely violent, and this story woudn't have time
Speaker 3: to go into when they actually a mother club member
Speaker 3: wanted me to kill him. But he was a source
Speaker 3: of myth and I had been buying meth from him
Speaker 3: over a period of time, and it was determined to
Speaker 3: be safest to get him to come out, you know,
Speaker 3: do a meth deal with him and have him taken
Speaker 3: off as a buy bust afterwards, and then that would start,
Speaker 3: you know, all the search warrants and the rest warrants
Speaker 3: that were going to happen after that. So so I
Speaker 3: met him. It was about two o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 3: The deal went down, and as he left, he was
Speaker 3: stopped and arrested, and and they you know, when they
Speaker 3: brought him back to interview, they basically told him, they said, hey,
Speaker 3: you in my club name. As you know, Dan was
Speaker 3: a Slam. They said, hey, you know Slam is a cop.
Speaker 3: You know he's an ATF agent. And hell Boy refused
Speaker 3: to believe he's like, no way he goes. I believe
Speaker 3: a lot of people might be a cop, not Slam.
Speaker 3: There's no way he's a cop. You know. It is
Speaker 3: Don Rose. They did all the the executor all the
Speaker 3: search warrants and the restaurants across six five or six
Speaker 3: different states, brought all the evidence and interviewed all the suspects,
Speaker 3: and then just fast forward because I don't want this
Speaker 3: out of time. You know, the legal process went on
Speaker 3: for By the time the last defendant played out, it
Speaker 3: was about four years. And that's just because they you know,
Speaker 3: they would go through all the different motions of trying
Speaker 3: to suppress different pieces of the evidence. The evidence was overwhelming.
Speaker 3: They you know, ultimately were not successful and suppressing you know,
Speaker 3: the evidence, and they all ultimately end up pleading guilty
Speaker 3: in receiving sentences sentence.
Speaker 6: It's very very interesting too. I don't want to give
Speaker 6: too much away, but there's so much that we didn't
Speaker 6: even talk about. And in all the fascinating story, but
Speaker 6: the body that we went on and talked about, that
Speaker 6: the body that you had moved and put in the ground.
Speaker 6: We talk about elaborate test. What did you discover about
Speaker 6: that body?
Speaker 3: But I mean almost every step with them was a test.
Speaker 3: And so you know, it's not just the body, it's
Speaker 3: you know, all of a sudden, you know, I would
Speaker 3: have peda come up to me and be like, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, could you, uh, let me see a gun?
Speaker 1: Is this?
Speaker 3: Uh? Is this ATF issued? Like literally would say ATF issue,
Speaker 3: And it's like all the agencies, why are you picking
Speaker 3: ATF do you know something? There was another time of
Speaker 3: photo it was in what he's looking for is reactions,
Speaker 3: and that's what they're always looking for. They're always trying
Speaker 3: to make you uncomfortable where you might say or do something.
Speaker 3: And there was a time when right before I got
Speaker 3: kicked out, you know that you referred to earlier where
Speaker 3: they you know, I called the cover team and say,
Speaker 3: Heyle's changed plans. They now say I have to go
Speaker 3: back to Long Island. And that was a part and
Speaker 3: the cover team was nowhere near me. They had already
Speaker 3: gone north and so they were probably about two hours
Speaker 3: from me, and they'd say, we'll just get on your
Speaker 3: bike and go and I'm like, no, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know if this is a test, I don't know what,
Speaker 3: you know, but I've got to follow through on this.
Speaker 3: And ultimately what it was they didn't know how to,
Speaker 3: you know, tell me that I was being kicked out
Speaker 3: of the game had nothing to do with me. The
Speaker 3: national Vice president was beaten out the night before and
Speaker 3: because he vouched me, anybody he vouched for it was out.
Speaker 3: So they you know, that was another test like are
Speaker 3: you going to stay? You're not going to go, and
Speaker 3: ultimately got kicked out and then they ended up bringing
Speaker 3: me back in. So it was it was a constant
Speaker 3: mind games. It was physically very difficult. It was oftentimes
Speaker 3: I had lost seventy eight pounds or some of the
Speaker 3: weekend from not eating during prospecting phasees feet bleeding, But
Speaker 3: it was mentally as much of a chess match as
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 6: Absolutely you right that you retired in twenty nineteen, and
Speaker 6: you had a proud moment when your daughter, one of
Speaker 6: your daughters, became an ATF agent herself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my youngest. I presented her with my badge upon
Speaker 3: her graduation from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and
Speaker 3: it was a very proud moment and she I'm sure
Speaker 3: we'll go on to chat her own investigative course, and
Speaker 3: I think she's going to be a terrific agent.
Speaker 6: You have some of the souvenirs from your time as
Speaker 6: a prospect for the Pagans, and you also do consulting
Speaker 6: and also just talk about your experiences. Tell us this
Speaker 6: a little bit about that before we say so long.
Speaker 3: So you know, for me, I do talk to law
Speaker 3: enforcement groups, and I do it for a purpose of,
Speaker 3: you know, trying to encourage others to do the same
Speaker 3: type of work. I think it is is one of
Speaker 3: the one of the tactics that can be used to
Speaker 3: get to the higher echelons, to get to the leadership,
Speaker 3: because oftentimes they insulate themselves and you're not getting there
Speaker 3: unless you do these types of investigations. And so it
Speaker 3: is a big commitment. Agencies, you know, shy away from
Speaker 3: this because there they are high risk, you know, both
Speaker 3: for the agents, but there's all sorts of things that
Speaker 3: can go wrong during the course of these investigations that
Speaker 3: have in the past. So I try to encourage folks
Speaker 3: to not shy away from it, to take this on
Speaker 3: and really look at these groups. They're extremely violent and
Speaker 3: they recavoc in the areas that they are in, and
Speaker 3: that we owe it to you, to these citizens to
Speaker 3: do what we can to eliminate these grips.
Speaker 6: Well, I want to thank you very much. It was
Speaker 6: a very courageous and very fascinating book. Riding with Evil
Speaker 6: taking down the notorious Pagan Motorcycle Gang with former ATF
Speaker 6: agent and author Ken Croke. Thank you so much for
Speaker 6: this interview, Ken Croke, you have a great evening, good night,
Speaker 6: Thank you.
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