Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs (34 page)

No Outlaws were killed in the incident, but Turner felt sickened that members of his club had been attacked in this way. Jim Vlahakis, the State Division Criminal Investigation Director, told the press that he planned to meet with the two gangs to ‘try to head off any potential problems,’ and added that eventual retaliation was likely. ‘It may not happen here. It could happen a month from now somewhere else,’ he said. Turner added a quote of his own: ‘It could even happen on the other side of the Atlantic.’

More bad news came the following June. Outlaw Frank Vital was shot dead in the car park of the Crazy Horse Saloon in Forest Park, Georgia – killed by a member of the Renegades MC, a support club for the Hell’s Angels.

Now all that Turner could think about was revenge. He wanted to send a message out into the world: that wherever
they were, no Hell’s Angel would ever be safe. He had the means and the motivation, and inspired by international events, he also had the method. So far as he was concerned, the sanction for carrying out a hit came from none other than National President Jack Rosga – the most senior Outlaw on the planet and a man who all the members of the British chapter paid a massive amount of respect to whenever they met up with him.

Daytona was by now an annual pilgrimage for Outlaws all over the world and the UK chapters were no exception. Turner had been over at least once and got to know many key figures from the leading American chapters of the club. He appreciated their no-nonsense approach to the biker life and their attitude to taking care of business. And Rosga, in particular, was an inspirational figure in Turner’s mind.

A veteran of the removals business and head of his own trucking company that earned him $100,000 a year, Rosga was apparently chosen for the post of national president because of his limited criminal history. A single conviction for a minor offence in the 1970s and a breach of a restraining order obtained by his ex-wife were the only blots on his copybook. (With both previous leaders serving lengthy sentences behind bars, the Outlaws were keen to choose someone who could at least give the appearance of being a legitimate businessman.)

But it was all a cover. According to an indictment, which emerged two years later, Rosga was responsible for directing campaigns of violence against enemies of the Outlaws across the country and beyond. In April 2007 he gave members the ‘green light’ to retaliate after an Outlaw member was fatally shot outside a strip club in Georgia. He
also told a fellow Outlaw to clean his own house, meaning anyone suspected of helping law enforcement should be killed. He also demanded revenge on the Hell’s Angels after two members were attacked in Florida. And it was at this point that he issued the edict that Outlaws should seek out and shoot members of the rival gang. So far as Turner and the other members of the south Warwickshire chapter were concerned, that ruling applied to them as well.

An attack from a moving car seemed ideal. The car itself would be easy to identify but it would also be easy to get rid of. Hitting a moving target at speed would be difficult but, leaving nothing to chance, Creighton spent weeks practising his marksmanship on a tailor’s dummy that he kept at home.

A few of the more junior members of the chapter were reluctant to get involved but they were soon goaded into action. ‘Are you a fucking Hell’s Angel lover?’ asked Turner. ‘Do you want to be a fucking Hell’s Angel or something? No, then why aren’t you coming with me to shoot one of the fuckers?’

Every member of the chapter had a role. Vice-president Dane Garside would drive the main car. Creighton would be in the passenger seat with one handgun and Turner would be in the rear of the car with another. Creighton, the more accomplished marksman of the two, would aim at the actual target, Turner would shoot at the bike itself with the intention of bringing it down. Even if the first shot missed, crashing a heavy Harley at 80 or 90mph on a busy motorway was almost certain to prove fatal and their mission would be accomplished.

Numerous contingencies and backup strategies were in place so that in the event that their chosen Angel survived the initial burst of gunfire, Dean Taylor was a little further behind in a white Range Rover along with probationers Karl Garside (Dane’s younger brother) and Ian Cameron, while a final member, club treasurer Malcolm Bull, was patrolling the area in a Renault Laguna, acting as a link between their two vehicles. Whatever happened, at the end of the day, at least one Angel had to be dead.

On 9th August 2007, the first day of the Bulldog Bash, the team began carrying out reconnaissance of the network of roads around the festival, performing dry runs of the planned execution. The hit itself was planned for the Sunday and the seven men gathered that morning at five am waiting for a suitable victim.

It had to be a full-patch Angel – there would be little kudos in taking out a prospect or a hangaround – and he had to be travelling in a small group. If there were too many of them the killers risked being pursued by the remaining bikers and being caught. If there were only two or three in the group, they would all stop to assist their fallen brother. With any luck, the bikers might even crash into one another and take out a couple more Angels.

Just before one in the afternoon, the team were waiting in a lay-by on the A46 when they spotted the perfect target. The full patch Angel was at the front followed by a prospect and then what appeared to be a hangaround. Garside put his foot down, following the bikes for the next thirty miles and gaining on them every second. It was time for the south Warwickshire chapter of the Outlaws to make their mark.

12th August, 2007, Warwickshire, England

By the time he saw the gun it was already too late.

Hell’s Angel hangaround Pawel Lec was half-way home, riding his Harley south down the M40 motorway after an exhausting weekend at the Bulldog Bash, when he spotted a dark green car coming up fast from behind and pulled into the middle lane to let it pass.

Lec was bringing up the rear of a three-bike convoy and as he approached junction 12, near Leamington Spa, the car, a Rover 620 saloon, raced past him then suddenly slowed down to match its speed with that of the man at the front of the group, Gerry Tobin.

Lec could only watch in horror as guns appeared out of the passenger side windows and fired two shots in quick succession. ‘The car drove off and it looked like nothing had happened to Gerry,’ Lec said later. ‘Then after a very short time – two or three seconds – I noticed that Gerry let go of the handles of his bike and fell underneath the wheels of mine.’

The first bullet had smashed through the metal mudguard at the back of Tobin’s Harley Davidson FXTB Night Train and skirted through the tread of his rear wheel; the second skimmed the base of the biker’s helmet and lodged in his
skull. Somehow, in the course of his fall, both of Tobin’s heavy biker boots came off. He ended up face down on the tarmac close to the central reservation while his bike skidded off onto the grass verge to the left.

Traffic on the motorway came to a sudden halt as drivers did their best to avoid what many assumed was simply a horrific motorcycle accident. Only those who had seen the guns or heard the shots knew better. A middle-aged woman driving a BMW pulled up beside the fallen biker, removed a first-aid kit from her boot and went to tend to him. She found no pulse and realised there was nothing to be done.

An air ambulance and other emergency service vehicles were on the scene within minutes and, after speaking to eyewitnesses, quickly established that they were dealing with a murder. For Detective Superintendent Ken Lawrence, the police officer placed in charge of the investigation, the task ahead of him was a daunting one: his crime scene was four lanes wide and more than a mile long.

The road was sealed off in both directions, trapping around 400 vehicles. Experts from the Forensic Science Service were rushed in to examine Tobin’s wounds in situ, confirming that he had been shot from a moving vehicle. Volunteers from the Red Cross brought food, water and foil blankets for the stranded motorists, while police officers carried out a meticulous fingertip search of the motorway and checked the tyres of each and every car to ensure none of them had a spent cartridge caught in the tread. It was a high-risk tactic that eventually paid off when a .32 cartridge case from a self-loading pistol was discovered.

The excitement generated by that one piece of evidence did not last long. Det Supt Lawrence had never dealt with
the Hell’s Angels before and found out the hard way that they do not cooperate with police, regardless of whether they are the victims or perpetrators of a murder. A key early line of enquiry was to establish whether Tobin was the victim of a random attack of whether he had been targeted specifically as a result of something he had done in his personal or professional life. However, not only would the Angels not provide anything but the most cursory information about their fallen brother, they also refused to allow police any access to his girlfriend, Rebecca Smith.

‘They do not talk to us, as witnesses and victims, they do not talk to us so sometimes we do not know what is really going on,’ lamented Det Supt Lawrence. ‘We are having great difficulty talking to his partner. They guard her very closely and won’t allow us to speak with her. We have no power to change that right now.’

It wasn’t as though the Angels didn’t have plenty to say: John ‘Bilbo’ Britt, a member of the biker club for more than thirty years and chief organiser of the Bulldog Bash was happy to speak to the press. ‘I knew the lad and you couldn’t wish to meet a better person. We’re used to deaths, as bikers. People die in accidents but we don’t expect someone to get shot. This is murder, plain and simple, and we have got no idea why this has happened … This year was a massive event and it went off virtually trouble-free. We had an amazing weekend and then this happened and it has totally shaken everybody. It’s a massive loss to the biker community as a whole.’

The minute the national officers of the Outlaws heard that a Hell’s Angel had been shot dead on the M40, they knew the south Warwickshire chapter were responsible. An
emergency meeting was called and all chapter presidents were told to drop whatever they were doing and get themselves to Birmingham as quickly as possible. The alert level was immediately raised to the biker equivalent of DEFCON 1 (most severe) with an expectation of immediate retaliation.

Turner had been sidelined from the rest of the club in the expectation that he wouldn’t be able to cause much trouble. The revelations about what the chapter had been getting up to hit the rest of the club like a tsunami.

‘A few friends of the club from Cov have been getting in touch,’ Caz told the rest of his chapter after returning from the national officers meeting. ‘Those fucking idiots have been smoking crystal meth and abusing people left right and centre. They’ve even been taking pot shots at police cars. They’ve completely lost the plot. They should have been finished off before any of this happened. As of right now, we’re all targets.’

The enemy had their own sources of information too. At least two Angel hit squads were seen in the Coventry area in the days after Tobin’s death, hunting for Turner and his cohorts. In the Outlaws camp, standing orders were introduced, forbidding any member from staying in the same place for more than forty minutes without moving on. Members had to call in every two hours to let their local sergeant-at-arms know exactly where they were. Additional guards were posted at all clubhouses and increased security protocols were implemented. Only full members and prospects were allowed entry. CCTV cameras were scrutinised before anyone came in or left.

It didn’t matter if you wore your patches or not. Within a mile of the clubhouse, anyone on a customised chopper
could be linked to the Outlaws and taken out. Members developed rituals to avoid being shot. Boone would jump on his bike and head off in one direction as quickly as possible then break, turn and head back the other way. He would take every possible short-cut, cut through traffic and generally drive like a lunatic. Once he was a mile away he would feel safe enough to drive normally but he was acutely aware of the target zone.

Members who felt their home addresses were too well known moved their families to safe houses as quickly as they could. Others chose to arm themselves. Plain-clothed Spotters were placed half a mile from the clubhouses, looking out for potential revenge attacks. No one expected the Angels to come by bike (too obvious and risky), instead the watchers were looking out for cars and vans. Club members were told to travel in pairs. Those considered to be remotely high risk would be provided with a security escort, even on their way to and from work. All the stops were pulled out to keep people as safe as possible.

For Boone and his fellow Outlaws there was little sympathy over the death of the Angel himself, the hardship was the realisation that their lives had been turned upside and that they did not have a say in this change of fortune. Going out for a ride and flying their patches, even in the heart of their own territory, was unthinkable. They were all targets for execution and, at least in the early days, their wives and children were just as much at risk as they were.

There was a certain degree of guilt among those who had turned a blind eye to everything that the south Warwickshire chapter were doing. Although every individual chapter of the Outlaws had the authority to carry out attacks on
members of the Hell’s Angels, the idea was to ensure such incidents were kept as discreet as possible. Beating an Angel to within an inch of his life and taking his patches resulted in massive humiliation for the enemy but rarely if ever generated any kind of police response. Even if the authorities found out, the bikers would never talk and an investigation would immediately stall.