Notorious Midwest biker badass Scott (Rhino) Hammond of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club’s Milwaukee chapter died back in the winter, bringing an end to a career on the streets known for his fearlessness as an enforcer. Rhino Hammond passed away on January 16, 2017. He was just 57 years old at the time of his death.

Hammond had been the Milwaukee Outlaws’ sergeant-at-arms. His arrest record dated back to the early 1980s. In January 1982, he went down on weapons and criminal property damage charges and in 1985 he was collared for burglary in a scheme where he was stealing cartons of cigarettes from gas stations. Fast forward to 1995 and Hammond was arrested in Merrillville, Wisconsin after a van he and two other prominent leaders of the Milwaukee Outlaws, Edward (Shock) Anastas and Richard (007) O’ Connor, were traveling in was pulled over and police found drugs and guns.

Shock Anastas and 007 O’ Connor were president and vice president, respectively, of the Outlaws’ Milwaukee chapter in the 1990s, at the peak of the so-called Midwest biker wars, a series of explosive conflicts that cut a swath through multiple rustbelt metropolises, pitting the Outlaws versus their invaders from the west coast, the Hells Angels. According to court records, in 1998, Anastas sent Rhino Hammond, accompanied by the infamous Wisconsin biker world hit team of Randall (Madman) Miller and William (Billy the Preacher) Schneider, to Minneapolis, Minnesota to assassinate then-Hells Angels Twin Cities chapter president Patrick Matter, an execution which never occurred due to logistical issues.

Per federal court filings, the Milwaukee Outlaws chapter “got the power” nationally in the late 1990s upon the incarceration of iconic Detroit-based Outlaws Godfather Harry (Taco) Bowman, the club’s beloved international president for the previous 15 years. Milwaukee has since ceded control of the whole club back over to chapters in Michigan and Illinois, modern-day experts contend. The Outlaws were founded out of Chicago.

Rhino Hammond was convicted of federal racketeering and narcotics offenses in the early 2000s. Both Shock Anastas and Preacher Schneider eventually flipped and entered the Witness Protection Program. Hammond did seven years in prison and was released in September 2009.

The post Milwaukee Outlaws MC Buried One Of Its Own In Winter Of ’17, ‘Rhino’ Hammond Remembered For Fearless Spirit appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The ranks of the “easy riders” in the City of Brotherly Love absorbed a blow this week as Philadelphia biker world strong arm Andrew (Raggedy Andy) Carr, an enforcer and drug lieutenant for the Warlocks Motorcycle Club’s Chester, Pennsylvania chapter was hit with an 11-year federal prison sentence for his participation in a narcotics trafficking conspiracy. Carr, 60, was a pusher and collector in the near $50,000 per month crystal meth ring brought down in May 2014. He was found guilty at a jury trial last spring.

The Warlocks were founded in Philly in 1967. Between 2000 and 2012, Carr was the athletic director at the Upper Darby Township Recreational Center, coaching boxing and coordinating Police Athletic League programs. Bobby (Mudman) Simon, the Warlocks’ first-ever national president, hailed from Upper Darby. Simon was slain in a prison fight 18 years ago.

The club’s most-recent meth case covered activity spanning the summer of 2013 through the spring of 2014. Carr’s Warlocks brothers, Andre Trombetta and Lamar Behlin, went down in the case as well. Trombetta, like Carr, sold dope and did muscle work at the same time. Chester is located in Delaware County and sits right in the middle between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware.

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The Palace of Auburn Hills’ legacy could contain point shaving on pro basketball games. The FBI investigated claims of shaving points by members of the NBA’s Detroit Pistons at the height of the franchise’s famed “Bad Boys” glory era but never brought any charges. One of the games probed for point shaving took place at the Palace in December 1989.

The Pistons played their last game at the Palace this week after a near three-decade residency in the once state-of-the-art building, losing to the Washington Wizards 105-101 They’ll move to the newly-constructed Little Caesars Arena in the fall to begin the 2018 season.

According to federal informants, two starters on the Pistons’ back-to-back world championship squads of 1989 and 1990, one being the greatest player in franchise history, Hall of Fame point guard Isiah Thomas, manipulated point spreads for mobsters. The severely-damning allegations failed to ever be substantiated.

“We looked into it,” a former FBI agent said. “Some investigators bought into the point shaving narrative, others didn’t. There was a little smoke there, we never found a full-on fire though, so we moved on (to other aspects of the investigation). The Pistons players themselves weren’t our focus. They were rubbing elbows with a few of the guys that were our focus though and got pulled into the fray that way. When people make those type of assertions, you have to check it out, run it up the flagpole. (Going after point shaving) wasn’t the priority, (going after) the mob was.”

Never a personal target of the criminal probe himself, Thomas was called in front a federal grand jury investigating Italian mafia activity in the Detroit area in 1990 to account for hundreds of thousands of dollars of suspicious check-cashing activity he did at a friend and convicted mob associate’s Southeastern Michigan grocery store chain. Thomas testified that the close to a half-million dollars in checks cashed in a six-month period in 1989 were for his wife’s weekly allowance.

Within months, a federal racketeering indictment dropped charging high-ranking Detroit mob figures Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone and Jack (Jackie the Kid) Giacalone, their top gambling lieutenants, Allen (The General) Hilf and Freddy (The Saint) Salem, Thomas’ buddy and next-door neighbor, Emmet Denha and others. Everyone wound up pleading guilty in the case. Also included in the bust was New York wiseguy Joey Costa, a reputed soldier in the Gambino crime family who acted as the Motor City crew’s “layoff bank” for their bookmaking activities.

Billy Giacalone and his older brother Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone were the faces of the Detroit mafia in the second half of the 20^th Century. Tony Giacalone died of cancer in 2001 awaiting trial in a federal racketeering case. Billy Jack climbed to the Tocco-Zerilli crime family’s underboss slot before he died of natural causes in 2012.

The 67-year old Jackie Giacalone, Billy Jack’s oldest son, was a soldier in the crime family at the time of the May 1991 bust and according to sources has since ascended from capo to street boss and then finally to the boss’ chair in 2014. The Jewish Hilf and the Lebanese Salem ran the Giacalone crew’s gambling affairs out of their Capital Street Social Club in Oak Park, Michigan, just a few blocks north of the Detroit city limits. Salem died of dementia in 2009. Hilf, the younger Giacalone’s best friend and main advisor, was felled by kidney failure in the winter of 2014.

Per FBI and court files, in the 1980s, Hilf and Salem would host semi-regular casino nights at the well-manicured estates of Motown pro athletes like Isiah Thomas and world boxing champion Tommy (The Hitman) Hearns. The roving backdoor gambling parlors were for high-rollers only and attracted a diverse clientele, drawing lawyers, doctors and local celebrities and an array of Goodfellas, gangsters, swaggering street hustlers and flashy drug dealers. Several members of the Detroit Pistons attended these casino nights and routinely wagered large sums of money shooting dice, according to federal informants.

Isiah Thomas

Thomas and teammate James Edwards, a well-liked journeyman NBA big fella, lost hundreds of thousands of bucks to the mob in those dice games, per these sources, and agreed to shave points for Hilf, Salem and Giacalones as a means of clearing their respective half-million dollars debt. The informants pointed to a pair of games early in the Pistons’ 1989-1990 season as to when the point shaving occurred – a December 16, 1989 road contest at Golden State and a December 29, 1989 home affair against the Milwaukee Bucks.

The night of the Golden State game, Thomas pulled himself from the lineup just minutes prior to tipoff, which wasn’t enough time for handicappers in Las Vegas to alter the betting line and the Pistons failed to cover the three-point spread., losing by 12 Back in Detroit at the Palace two weeks later, the Pistons were 10-point favorites versus the Bucks and lost by 14 courtesy of a late collapse with Thomas having one of the worst efforts of his pro career (he had a mere 2 points and 2 assists in the game).

Both Thomas and Edwards have always steadfastly denied the point-shaving allegations. Edwards, nicknamed “Buddha” for his Fu-Manchu-style facial hair, had 17 points in the Milwaukee game, however just put in four points in the Golden State contest weeks earlier. Before being traded to the Pistons from the Phoenix Suns in 1988, Edwards was swept up in a drug and gambling scandal surrounding the Suns team in 1986 and 1987 resulting in a criminal indictment out Arizona.

Thomas’ childhood best friend and Pistons teammate Mark Aguirre became so worried about Thomas’ gambling habit and mafia links during the 1990 campaign, he arranged to meet with the FBI to discuss the issue in the middle of the squad’s playoff run en route to a second straight NBA crown. According to federal records, Aguirre met a pair of FBI agents for lunch at Deli Unique in West Bloomfield, Michigan on his way to the Palace for Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals against Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls.

The two games in question in December 1989 was a topic of conversations for the club in the locker room and at a New Year’s Eve party, per these reports citing unnamed players present, with Thomas and Edwards eventually being confronted by teammates regarding their concerns. Edwards, the team’s starting power forward in 1990, was shipped to the L.A. Clippers at the end of the 1991 season.

The FBI and IRS first came across Thomas’ name in a 1989 audit of his close friend Emmet Denha, an Iraqi immigrant and successful Metro Detroit businessman who lived next door to Thomas in swanky Bloomfield Hills, was named Godfather to Thomas’ son and enjoyed the company of Italian mobsters. Denha was one of the lower-level targets of a federal inquiry into mafia activity in Michigan and Thomas cashed over $400,000 worth of checks, believed at first glance to be gambling proceeds, through Denha’s grocery store chain. Three years later, Denha copped to helping Billy and Jackie Giacalone wash more than $7,000,000 through the same chain and did a year in prison.

The day after the Pistons captured their second world title in a row on the road in Portland against the Portland Trailblazers in June 1990, the then-CBS television affiliate WJBK Channel 2, broke the news of Thomas being subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury investigating a Giacalone-crew led gambling ring. Moments after landing back in Detroit to celebrate his Pistons’ championship, Thomas got into a physical altercation with a reporter trying to interview him about the subpoena at the airport.

James Edwards

The NBA opened an investigation into Thomas’ alleged ties to the mob and the claims that he and Edwards shaved points for the mafia, however, closed the inquiry within months and decided to pursue any actions against the players in question. Allen Hilf and Jackie Giacalone had their names surface in a FBI and NCAA probe of point shaving in the University of the Toledo’s football and basketball programs in the early 2000s, but again like in the 1990s, no charges were ever filed against them.

Two other Motown wiseguys didn’t fare nearly as well as Hilf and Giacalone did. Detroit mob associates Mitchell (Steady Eddie) Karam and Gary (The Cigarette) Manni would go on to plead guilty to paying Toledo athletes to shave points. Karam and Manni are of Iraqi descent.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Hilf could be found sitting courtside at most Pistons home games, first at the Silverdome and then down the road at the Palace, when it opened its doors in August 1988. Sources told the FBI that he had various Pistons’ timekeepers on his payroll to help him rig outcomes of NBA games during that period. For decades up until his death three years ago, Hilf was one of the most prolific bookies in the country.

The Pistons called the Palace home for 29 seasons, posting three NBA title banners, the two by the Isiah Thomas-captained Bad Boys and one in 2004 in the “Going To Work” era of the franchise headlined by the backcourt of “Mr. Big Shot” Chauncey Billups and Richard “Rip” Hamilton. Billups, Thomas and Edwards were on hand Monday night at the Pistons-Wizards game that brought the curtain down on the organization’s Palace reign.

Thomas retired as a Piston in 1994. Edwards played until 1996, hanging up his sneakers after earning another NBA championship ring, along with former Bad Boys Dennis Rodman and John Salley, with Jordan and the Bulls. Rodman and Salley were each in attendance at the Pistons’ final game at the Palace Monday. Hamilton and Billups retired in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

The post Pistons Run At The Palace Comes To End, Three NBA Titles & One Possible Point-Shaving Incident Part Of Building’s History appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Following over a decade behind bars for taking part in a pair of contract murders, New York hit man Barry (Mungo) Broughton, a one-time enforcer for iconic east coast drug kingpin Kenny (Supreme) McGriff, was sentenced to time served by a federal court judge earlier this month. Mungo Broughton, 43, testified against McGriff at his 2007 trial where McGriff was convicted for narcotics trafficking and two first-degree homicides and was sent away to prison for the rest of his life.

Broughton is still facing a maximum five-year state prison sentence for a parole violation in Pennsylvania. He worked under McGriff in the late 1990s and early 2000s as McGriff was trying to publically reinvent himself as a music industry player and movie producer and admitted to being part of a McGriff-dispensed hit squad that killed two of his rivals in the drug game, Eric (E Moneybags) Smith and Troy (Big Nose T) Singleton.

*the photo above shows Smith slumped in the driver’s seat of his SUV in the moments after he was slain in the summer of 2001.

McGriff and his “Supreme Team” crack-cocaine empire were the most well-known of the New York dope boy crews of the 1980s, using the Baisley Park Projects in the southeast section of Queens as their home base. McGriff went to prison in November 1987 and with the exception of a brief six-month respite, remained locked up until 1997 when he reemerged intent on insulating himself from exposure in the drug world by recrafting his image as a businessman.

The purported transformation bore fruit fast for the Baron of Baisley Park, with McGriff being recruited as an affiliate of fledgling rap label Murder, Inc. and embarking on a plan to produce adaptations of author Donald Goines’ books into films. Goines wrote of life on the street in Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s and gained a deeply devoted fan base inside correctional institutes around the country.

In reality, McGriff was still ruling a big chunk of the New York drug scene with an iron fist like he did back in the crack era. It wasn’t long until bodies began falling again.

A dispute between original Supreme Team lieutenant and McGriff confidant Colbert (Black Justice) Johnson and rapper and drug dealer” E Moneybags” Smith turned violent on the afternoon of December 11, 1999 with Smith shooting Johnson. Sources told the FBI and DEA, McGriff was present and sped off from the incident – which occurred on a street corner in southeast Queens – in a luxury SUV with Johnson inside, but was so worried about his connection to the altercation violating his parole, waited too long to drive his comrade to the hospital for help. Johnson died on the operating room table.

Rap legend Jay Z (left) & street legend Supreme McGriff (right) circa 1999

According to court testimony, McGriff unleashed his enforcement unit led by Emmanuel (Manny Dog) Mosley, putting $50,000 murder contracts on the heads of E Moneybags Smith and Smith’s associate “Big Nose T” Singleton. One of the shooters in Mosley’s hit squad was Mungo Broughton. Mosley followed Broughton into Witness Protection Program and testified against McGriff at his trial.

On July 16, 2001, Smith was gunned down in a drive-by shooting sitting behind the wheel of his Lincoln Navigator while talking on his cell phone, his vehicle hit with 40 rounds of automatic weapon fire from a passing Mercedes containing four triggermen. Three months later, on October 28, 2001, Singleton was shot to death execution style outside in South Jamaica, Queens.

In between the Smith and Singleton slayings, McGriff did some internal housecleaning, ordering another killing: the murder of McGriff’s Maryland stash-house lieutenant, Karon (Buddha) Clarret, who got bit in a drug case in North Carolina in the spring and McGriff feared couldn’t stand up the charges. Buddha Clarret and his driver, Dwayne (Blizzard) Thomas were gunned down on August 21, 2001 in the parking lot of the Red Run Apartments in Owings Mill, Maryland. The Red Run Apartments housed a stash spot Clarret was responsible for overseeing.

Broughton and Mosley were shooters in the hits on Smith and Singleton. Another McGriff enforcer, Victor (Razor) Wright, is believed to have been the triggerman in the Clarett and Thomas murders. A search of the Maryland stash house three days following Clarett and Thomas’ slayings uncovered drug ledgers, McGriff’s fingerprints and a homemade surveillance video of E Moneybags Smith in the days and hours preceding his execution shot by a girlfriend of McGriff lieutenant Dennis (Divine) Crosby’s who happened to live on the same block in Queens Village that Smith did.

The post ‘Mungo’ Broughton, Muscle For Legendary NYC Dope Don ‘Supreme’ McGriff, Might Be Coming Home Soon appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The last gasp of Detroit’s notorious Purple Gang came in late 1989, some 60 years after the all-Jewish crime syndicate dominated the Motor City’s bootlegging industry with a near-decade murderous reign atop the region’s rackets, when ex-Purple Ganger and deceased Detroit mob associate William (Candy) Davidson was indicted in a narcotics conspiracy case. The then-78 year old Davidson was found guilty at a 1990 trial, but had the conviction tossed on appeal and then went on to beat the charges with an acquittal at a second trial in 1992.

Candy Davidson and his longtime bodyguard and business partner Marvin (The Steelman) Mulligan were busted on a 10-count drug and tax evasion indictment handed down in October 1989, charging them with conducting both cocaine and heroin pushing. Mulligan would be convicted in absentia – going on the run for four years – and eventually be sentenced to six years in prison. He walked free in 1997. Authorities called the Davidson-Mulligan drug operation the largest suburban narcotics ring in Metro Detroit, estimating it was bringing in and distributing 50 kilos of cocaine and $100,000,000 of heroin per month.

The historic Purple Gang was founded and led by the infamous Burnstein brothers (Abe, Joe, Ray and Izzy), who ran their empire from the Book-Cadillac Hotel in downtown Detroit from roughly 1925 until the end of Prohibition. After the Prohibition Act was abolished nationally in 1933, three of the Burnsteins (Abe, Joe & Izzy) retired with vast fortunes built on booze and blood that they would turn into legitimate financial portfolios in subsequent years through lucrative investments in the oil business. Some of their Purple Gang lieutenants did the same and went “straight,” while others continued plying their trades in the underworld and were absorbed by the area’s Italian mafia.

The Purple Gang dabbled in drug dealing in the 1920s and 1930s and a number of former Purples became narcotics peddlers for Motown’s Tocco-Zerilli crime family. Ex-Purple Ganger Sammy (The Mustache) Norber was one of Detroit’s biggest wholesale heroin czars in the mid-to-late 20^th Century.

Candy Davidson was connected to Norber’s ‘H’ operations. His ties to the Midwest drug world dated back to the 1950s when he took his first heroin pinch. During the latter years of Prohibition, Davidson belonged to a Purple Gang crew overseen by syndicate enforcers Ray Burnstein and Harry (H.F.) Fleisher. Sammy Norber had once acted as Ray Burnstein’s driver.

Burnstein was imprisoned in 1931 for his role in the Collingwood Apartment Massacre, the only one of the four brothers to fail to make it out of the violence-laced Prohibition era unscathed. The Collingwood Apartment Massacre was a purge of three Chicago-bred Purple defectors orchestrated by a hit team led by Burnstein and Fleisher.

On December 2, 1944, Davidson took part in the robbery of the Aristocrat Club in Pontiac, Michigan, a town 15 miles north of Detroit. The Aristocrat Club was an after-hours gambling den occupied mostly by Greek wiseguys. Also involved in the planning of the stick-up was Harry Fleisher and Fleisher’s protégé Myron (Young Mikey) Selik, the head of a crew known as the “Junior Purples.”.

The owner of the club, Jimmy Dades, had been refusing to pay a street tax to Fleisher and Fleisher and his henchmen walked away with $800 bucks from the early-morning job. Davidson was one of the stick-up men and Fleisher was the getaway driver. A witness testified that Davidson received $150 for his work.

At some point in the 1960s, Davidson hooked up and started doing business with Marvin Mulligan. FBI and DEA files link Mulligan to one-time Detroit mafia captain Vincent (Little Vince) Meli. Mulligan was a known heroin wholesaler. He and Davidson started a labor consulting firm and were often found on movie and network television shoots in the area being retained to make things run smooth with the unions. Meli, long connected to labor racketeering prior to his death of cancer in 2009, used Mulligan for help in maintaining order in the steel hauling and scrap metal industries, according to sources.

Per federal records, the government got tipped off to Davidson and Mulligan’s drug network in the fall 1988 from a wiretap on the phone of Allen (The General) Hilf, at the time the biggest bookmaker in the state of Michigan and despite being Jewish, a high-ranking figure in the local Italian mob hierarchy. Hilf was tied in with numerous former Purple Gangers in his heyday as a shot-caller in the Detroit underworld.

The FBI, DEA and IRS initiated a joint probe into Davidson and Mulligan’s affairs in November 1988, per federal documents, and kept the pair under heavy surveillance until the following summer. Mulligan would often shuttle Davidson around in a black-colored Mercedes and when the pair wasn’t together they communicated mostly via pay phone, per surveillance logs.

DEA agents raided Davidson’s residence in suburban Farmington Hills, Michigan on August 11, 1989 and confiscated a large quantity of fentanyl, a controlled substance commonly used for cutting heroin. Davidson and Mulligan were in handcuffs within the week, the official indictment dropping right before Halloween.

With a Mulligan underling named Billy Guild as the U.S. Attorneys star witness, Davidson was convicted in the case in March 1990. Three months later he was hit with a 10-year term behind bars. The next June, the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed his guilty verdict on the grounds that Mulligan being absent from the trial provided an undue burden for Davidson with his jury, specifically related to Mulligan’s considerable tax issues and a tax return he filed in 1977 that he admitted portions of his income is derived from “narcotics.” Defense attorney Stephen Rabaut won an acquittal for Davidson in the retrial.

The post Final Purple Gang-Related Indictment Ensnared ‘Candy’ Davidson In Drug Bust He Eventually Beat appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The Outlaws Motorcycle Club in Chicago has moved hitching posts. Back in the winter, the Outlaws infamous North Side chapter left its longtime stomping grounds on Division Street in Humboldt Park and relocated to a new clubhouse on the city’s far west end in an industrial warehouse district.

The property the North Side chapter’s former clubhouse sits on was sold in February for just under $100,000, according to an article in the Chicago Sun-Times. The Outlaws’ North Side chapter was opened in 1994. The entire club itself was founded in the Windy City in the mid-1930s, the oldest of the nation’s one-percenter biker gangs.

Before the Outlaws moved in almost two dozen years ago, the Humboldt Park property had been occupied by the Wheelman Motorcycle Club. Per court records, the Outlaws absorbed the Wheelman in a region wide upping of the ranks in the 1990s in response to the west coast-based Hells Angels starting to push into the Midwest, focusing on Illinois and Wisconsin as key hubs in their expansion effort.

The North Side clubhouse was raided by the FBI in 2008, part of an investigation into the chapter’s links to the Chicago mafia. The Northsider’s liaison to the Italians, Mark (Pork Chop) Polchan would go down in a racketeering and extortion bust the following year alongside then-Outfit acting boss Michael (Fat Mike) Sarno. Polchan owned a pawn shop in notoriously mob-infested Cicero, Illinois which was a frequent hangout and fencing spot for Sarno’s Cicero crew.

Embattled Outlaws boss Peter (Big Pete) James, the North Side chapter president for more than a decade, resigned under pressure from his biker gang brethren in summer of 2015, leaving the club and retiring to focus solely on his fight with cancer. James and Polchan reportedly tried intimidating a future witness against Polchan and Sarno in a bar altercation in Berwyn, Illinois in 2010.

Polchan was the North Side chapter’s treasurer – he bombed a Berwyn vending company Sarno was feuding with over video poker distribution routes and is currently doing 60 years in prison. Fat Mike Sarno got sentenced to 25-to-50 years in the joint. Jason (Babyface Jay) Halvorson replaced James as the Outlaws’ North Side president and commander and chief.

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New York drug lord Harvey (Big Black) Christian was sentenced to 50 years in prison earlier this month for his role in leading a Staten Island crack cocaine empire run out of the Park Hill Projects in Clifton for upwards of 20 years. His younger brother, Anthony (Nitty) Christian, was smacked with a life sentence last summer. The pair were convicted together at a 2014 trial and maintained alleged ties to the legendary New York hip-hop clique and rap super group, the Wu Tang Clan. A majority of the Wu Tang Clan members hail from former Christian brothers crew territory in Staten Island.

Two Wu Tang Clan rappers, Robert (RZA) Diggs and Corey (Raekwon the Chef) Woods, were investigated for ordering a pair of revenge killings in the summer of 1999 after their relatives were robbed, probed for utilizing their links to the Christians’ organization to seek their wrath on the suspected assailants. The revelations were unearthed in an FBI dossier kept on Wu Tanger Russell (Ol’ Dirty Bastard) Jones released five years ago. “ODB” died of a drug overdose in 2004.

The Christian brothers and their drug kingdom were connected to the Bloods street gang out of Los Angeles and ruled the Park Hill projects from the early 1990s until 2012 when the Christians and most of their underlings were indicted in a racketeering, narcotics and murder case. While “Nitty” Christian was directly linked to homicides in the indictment, “Big Black” Christian wasn’t.

The FBI had informants tell them “RZA” Diggs and “Raekwon the Chef” issued murder contracts on the Christian brothers’ Park Hill gangland rivals, Jerome (Boo Boo) Estella and Corey (Shank Bank) Brooker after Estella allegedly robbed Diggs’ younger brother of a diamond-studded chain at Brooker’s behest and Brooker himself reportedly robbed Woods’ cousin of cash and jewelry. The 17-year old Estella, who had recently returned to the neighborhood following a stint in a juvenile detention center and was part of a rival Bloods faction on the street led by Brooker, was gunned down in the Park Hill projects on July 19, 1999. Brooker, 26, was slain three days later on June 22 in nearby Stapleton getting out of his car.

RZA

One federal snitch told of RZA placing a $30,000 bounty on Brooker’s head. The Christian brothers’ top hit man Brian (Trigger Trev) Humphreys admitted to killing Estella and Nitty Christian, 44, was found guilty of a being the head of the homicide conspiracy and providing Humphreys the murder weapon. “Trigger Trev” Humphreys, arrested the night Estella was killed, and Paul (Unc) Ford, the Christian brothers’ second-in-command and primary supplier, were the star witnesses at the Christians’ trial two years ago. Humphreys copped to five additional murders as part of his plea deal.

Humphreys and Ford each fingered Diggs in seeking out Nitty Christian’s help in tracking down and murdering Estella and Brooker, already on bad terms with Nitty and his big bro from a turf dispute. Ford heard that RZA had another hit man bump off Brooker and paid the murderer the 30k as offered. Per his own debriefing, Ford discussed the situation with RZA personally on more than one occasion, Nitty sanctioned the contracts on Estella and Brooker and Humphreys lived up to his nickname, eagerly volunteering to handle the wet work – because of his arrest so shortly after the Estella job, he never got the opportunity to go after Brooker resulting in RZA giving the contract to a man identified simply as “Phife.”

Rumors began floating around in 2015 that the FBI was thinking about re-opening homicide probes into Diggs and Woods and re-investigating their possible involvement in the Estella and Brooker rub outs back in the 1990s. More rumors emerged this past summer that the feds had closed any inquiry they had going.

“Nitty” Christian (left) and “Big Black” Christian (right) in the 1990s

Big Black Christian, 45, denied any participation in the slayings of Estella and Brooker, calling them his friends. The Christians beat murder charges in 1997. Attorneys for Nitty Christian tried using the “Wu Tang angle” as grounds for appealing his first-degree homicide conviction.

Several members of the Wu Tang Clan have gone on to achieve solo-career success and mainstream pop-culture fame. “ODB,” Method Man, GZA, Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef all released acclaimed solo projects and RZA and Method Man have crafted acting portfolios in Hollywood. RZA has appeared in such popular films as American Gangster, Funny People, Ghost Dog and Due Date and wrote and directed the 2012 Russell Crowe-starring vehicle The Man With The Iron Fists. Method Man has had roles in Belly, How High, Garden State, The Wackness and critically-acclaimed HBO television series, Oz and The Wire.

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In an interview with award-winning FoxPhilly29 investigative reporter Dave Schratwieser this week to promote his new memoir, former Philadelphia mob boss Ralph Natale discusses three gangland murders from the 1990s (view here). Natale, 82, was the boss of the Bruno-Scarfo crime family from the fall of 1994 until he entered the Witness Protection Program in the autumn of 1999.

Talking with Schratwieser by phone, the lightning rod of a one-time Godfather commented on the slayings of wiseguys Michael (Dutchie) Avicolli, Tony Turra and Ronnie Turchi. Avicolli and Turra were killed under Natale’s watch. Turchi was killed reportedly as a message to an incarcerated Natale in the weeks after he flipped. He had been Natale’s consigliere.

Natale testified to his knowledge of several murders at a high-profile South Philly mob trial in the summer of 2001, but his testimony failed to convict anybody of any homicides and he did 13 years in prison, longer than anyone he pointed the finger at on the stand. His former underboss, mafia protégé and successor as don, Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino, the headlining defendant in the case, did 12 years as a guest of the government. Merlino, 55, is back on the street, awaiting trial under a freshly-drafted federal racketeering indictment out of New York and alleged by authorities to be in charge of mob activity in Philadelphia from his bond-restricted perch inside his luxury Boca Raton, Florida condo.

Last month, Natale released a book titled The Last Don Standing, penned by New York Daily News scribe Larry McShane (Chin: The Life & Crimes of Vincent Gigante) and television producer Dan Pearson (I Married a Mobster) buy a copy here. There’s said to be a movie in the works too starring The Purge: Anarchy’s Frank Grillo. Natale, the notorious labor-union fixer and hitman in the Philly mob’s 1970s Angelo Bruno regime, climbed to the apex of power in his mentor’s beloved crime family from behind bars on arson and drug-trafficking charges years later, using Merlino and his crew of fearless, able-bodied loyalists to fight and win a shooting war on the street against Sicilian don John Stanfa, one of those believed responsible for Bruno’s March 1980 assassination.

Ronnie Turchi was a member of Stanfa’s camp during the conflict – overseeing Stanfa’s policy bank –, however, following Stanfa’s imprisonment and Natale’s walking free in 1994, he jumped sides and was tapped as Natale’s consigliere and official advisor. Within two years, Turchi would be demoted to the rank of soldier in the wake of a parole violation for meeting with Natale and Merlino. When Natale was violated and locked up for a similar infraction in the summer of 1998, his former No. 3 in charge was left unprotected and Merlino maneuvered to grab control of the entire Philadelphia mafia for himself.

Turchi, 61, popped up dead on October 26, 1999, found hogtied, tortured and shot in the back of the head inside the trunk of his wife’s on 7^th Street and Federal in South Philly. Feeling abandoned and betrayed by Merlino, Natale had cut his deal with the feds the month before.

Roger Vella, Merlino’s former driver and gopher, is believed to have been the set-up man in the Turchi hit. Vella joined Team USA shortly thereafter. Merlino’s acting boss Joseph (Uncle Joe) Ligambi allegedly admitted playing a role in the Turchi murder in a statement to his then-North Jersey capo Peter (Pete the Crumb) Caprio in early 2000 – “We dimed out Ronnie to send a message to Ralph,” Ligambi is said to have uttered. Caprio followed Natale into the witness box.

“They (Merlino & his crew) were afraid of Ronnie Turchi, he was a very dangerous guy,” Natale told Schratwieser in Monday night’s FoxPhilly29 broadcast. “And same with Tony Turra, he was caught on tape (an FBI wire) saying he wanted to kill Joey (Merlino).”

Turra, an independent mobster, policy boss and drug dealer, was gunned down as he left for court on March 18, 1998 to hear his verdict in his racketeering and attempted murder trial, felled in a wheelchair with two shots point-blank to the eye and forehead by a ski-mask wearing assailant toting a silencer-equipped weapon. Merlino had feuded with Turra’s son Louie in years prior (Louie Turra committed suicide in federal custody). The elder Turra, a 62-year old contemporary of Natale’s, was heard on federal surveillance contemplating if he should bomb Merlino’s home with Merlino, Merlino’s wife and his baby daughter inside.

Dutchie Avicolli belonged to Merlino’s inner circle and is alleged to have met his demise over affairs of the heart. Avicolli got behind the wheel of his Buick and left his South Philly residence on the morning of April 3, 1996 and was never seen again. Multiple sources tell Gangster Report, Avicolli was in a beef with Merlino’s right-hand man and underboss Steven (Handsome Stevie) Mazzone over the fact that Avicolli was having a romance with Mazzone’s wife and Mazzone had retaliated by seducing Avicolli’s niece.

“They took Dutchie for a ride up to North Jersey and he never came home,” said Natale of the Avicolli hit to Schratwieser in the interview.

According to FBI informants, Avicolli, 52, was shot in the head and buried on farm property in New Jersey by Mazzone, Merlino and others. The Avicolli, Turra and Turchi homicides are getting a new looksee by investigators in an ongoing racketeering and murder probe centered around modern-day Philadelphia mob activity per Schratwieser’s report this week.

The post The Last Don Standing Talks Murders From Philly Mafia Past – ‘Dutchie’, Turra & Turchi hits – With Local Journalist appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The 1970s in the Cleveland underworld was a rough-and-tumble affair, as the city’s traditional Italian mafia had its hold on the region’s rackets challenged by an upstart Irish gangster and labor organizer named Danny Greene. By late in the decade, Cleveland was deeply imbedded in a chaotic bombing war, pitting the Italians on the eastside against the stubborn and fearless Greene and his Irish mob on the westside. Greene teamed with local Italian racketeer and labor-union power John Nardi in his war versus the mafia, sending the Italians scrambling and looking out-of-state for help in combatting its increasingly-bothersome problems with the “Irishman”.

The Cleveland mafia’s war with the formidable Danny Greene and his so-called “Celtic Club,” got the Hollywood treatment in 2011 with the film Kill The Irishman starring Ray Stevenson, Val Kilmer, Paul Sorvino and Christopher Walken.

THE DANNY GREENE WAR TIMELINE:

October 31, 1971 – Art Snepeger, Danny Greene’s gopher and overall right-hand man, is blown up in a car bomb he was attaching to the Cadillac of Greene’s friend-turned-rival in the trash-hauling industry Michael (Big Mike) Fratto.

November 26, 1971 – Michael (Big Mike) Fratto is killed in a shootout with Danny Greene which broke out when a car carrying Fratto approached a jogging Greene at Cleveland’s White City Beach Park. Greene is let off on self-defense grounds.

March 29, 1975 – Notorious Cleveland Jewish mobster and numbers boss Alex (Shondor) Birns is blown up in a car bomb attached to his Cadillac parked behind Christy’s Lounge on Detroit Street after a falling out with Greene, a former protégé of his.

May 26, 1976 – Longtime Cleveland mafia Godfather John Scalish dies on the operating table in a risky medical procedure on his ailing heart. The heavily-respected 64-year old Scalish had led the Ohio crime family since the 1940s and reportedly tapped capo James (Jack White) Licavoli before he died. Scalish’s passing sends the city’s underworld into a freefall it would never recover from, starting with Greene and his buddy John Nardi, the nephew of Scalish’s consigliere, Anthony (Tony the Old Man) Milano, making a play for the crown themselves.

July 19, 1976 – Innocent civilian Frank Pircio, the 50-year old neighbor of Cleveland mob soldier Alfred (Allie Con) Calabrese, is killed in a car bomb attached to Calabrese’s brand-new Lincoln Continental when going to move the vehicle obstructing his own on his way to work one early summer morning.

July 21, 1976 – Infamous Cleveland mob enforcer Eugene (The Animal) Ciasullo is nearly murdered in a porch bomb planted under his house. Ciasullo survives the blast, but the explosion blew apart his stomach and he was in the hospital recovering for weeks before voluntarily bowing from the hostilities.

August 22, 1976 – Cleveland mafia underboss Calogero (Leo Lips) Moceri disappears, his blood-soaked Mercedes the only evidence of his slaying. Moceri was don Jack Licavoli’s cousin and best friend. Earlier that month, Moceri had gotten into a public verbal spat with John Nardi at the annual Feast of the Assumption.

April 1977 – Hells Angel biker Enis (Eagle) Crnic is killed while attempting to attach a car bomb to a vehicle belonging to eastside Italian mob associate John (Johnny Del) Delzoppo. Despite the Hells Angels working relationship with the mafia, Crnic was hired by Greene for the job, greatly angering Licavoli and his administration.

May 17, 1977 – Aspiring Buckeye State mafia overlord and labor union boss John Nardi is killed in a car bomb outside his labor union hall.

June 1977 – Cleveland mob associate and explosive expert Henry (Boom Boom) Grecco, a member of the hit team that planned and carried out the Nardi bombing, vanishes, presumably in “clean-up” from the Nardi job.

October 6, 1977 – Cagey Cleveland Irish mob boss Danny (The Irishman) Greene is killed in a car bomb in the parking lot of a suburban Lyndhurst, Ohio dentist’s office. Licavoli brought in Erie, Pennsylvania mob figure and known hit man Ray Ferrito to head the effort to finally do away with the 43-year old Irishman forever. Ferrito eventually flipped.

Summer of 1978 – The year after Greene’s murder, his former Westside Irish mob, known amongst themselves as “The Celtic Club,” was merged into Licavoli’s Eastside Italian mafia. A peace meeting in late June 1978 between both factions was brokered by rising Cleveland mafia lieutenant Tommy (The Chinaman) Sinito.

July 6, 1978 – Cleveland mobster Joey Bonarrigo is murdered in a beef with the Hells Angels.

November 16, 1978 – Irish mob strong arm Keith (The Enforcer) Ritson, who acted as Danny Greene’s main muscle and top hit man, is shot to death by Hans (The Surgeon) Graewe, a German-born Cleveland mafia associate and deranged assassin, on orders of the Licavoli group after word of Ritson’s intent on settling old scores with the Italians began surfacing in the weeks following the successful peace conference.

*James Licavoli was the first mob boss convicted under the soon-to-be-commonplace RICO law in 1982 and died three years later of heart failure at 81.

Danny Greene (left) outside a Cleveland courthouse in the 1970s

The post Plenty Of Fireworks In Cleveland Mafia In The 1970s: The Danny Greene Mob War Timeline appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Goodbye Beantown. Hello, City of Brotherly Love. Boston mobster Pryce (Stretch) Quintina appears ready to relocate.

The 77-year old veteran Patriarca crime family soldier was released from an 18-month federal prison term for extortion to a Philadelphia halfway house this week. He’ll walk free for good on May 29. His reason for moving to Philly is unknown at this time as is his personal links to any local Goodfellas.

Quintina worked directly on behalf of former New England mafia acting boss Anthony (Spucky) Spagnolo. He was the nephew of deceased Patriarca crime family consigliere Charles (Q-Ball) Quintina. Stretch Quintina and his uncle “Q-Ball” went down together in a 1995 racketeering bust and both were present at the ill-fated fall 1989 induction ceremony bugged by the FBI.

In a subsequent federal audio surveillance from 1992, the younger Quintina is heard asking a mob superior permission to “bounce this guy off the wall,” in reference to an indebted gambler. According to court records and FBI documents, he’s thought to have played a role in the Angelo Patrizzi murder from the spring of 1981, but was never charged. The man Quintina was requesting the go-ahead from to bounce his debtor off the wall, Alexander (Sonny Boy) Rizzo, on the other hand, would go on to be convicted in the Patrizzi hit. Patrizzi drew the ire of the Patriarca clan by vowing to avenge the killing of his half-brother years before and allegedly putting contracts on the heads of mob administrators he held responsible.

In December 2015, Spucky Spagnolo and Stretch Quintina pled guilty to shaking down the Constitution Vending Co. for more than $50,000 over an eight-year period and muscling the Revere Moose Lodge into remaining loyal to Constitution and not leaving for a better financial deal elsewhere for fear of reprisals. Spagnolo, 75, is slated for release later this year in December.

Prior connections between the Boston underworld and Philadelphia mafia have the decision by Quintina to come to Philly under the microscope with mob watchers. Current Bruno-Scarfo crime family boss Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino maintained a crew in Boston in the1990s and assigned his then-consigliere George (Georgie Boy) Borgesi as liaison to the New England wing. Per FBI informant files, Skinny Joey Merlino inducted four soldiers from New England into the Philly mob in the early summer of 1998.

The FBI thinks at least a portion of the masterworks stolen from Boston’s exclusive Isabella Stewart Gardner in the early morning hours of March 18, 1990 made its way from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania at some point in the late 1990s or early 2000s via Merlino’s New England satellite for an attempted sale that may or may not have transpired. The half-billion dollar pilfering of paintings by Rembrandt, Manet and Vermeer was allegedly pulled off by a pair of Boston wiseguys and to this day has never been solved.

Merlino, 55, and both his Boston and Philly crews were nailed for racketeering activities in 1999. Convicted at a circus-like 2001 trial, he did a dozen years in the clink, getting released in early 2011 and transferring his base of operations from South Philly to South Florida. He was indicted on more racketeering charges last summer and is free on bond.

Borgesi, 53, came out of prison in 2014 and despite only being a captain in rank has soundly reasserted himself in the mix in the South Philly streets, emerging in recent years as the leader of a prominent faction in the modern-day Bruno-Scarfo syndicate, per sources. These same sources say Borgesi is in the midst of successfully leveraging a series of out-of-state mob contacts he made behind bars to add to his growing powerbase, including a specific focus on reinvigorating a Philly mafia presence in New England.

At least two of these sources claim Borgesi has taken meetings with either Patriarca crime family underboss Matthew (Good-Looking Matty) Guglielmetti himself or those representing his interests and former Boston satellite crew member Shawn Vetere since the beginning of the year. The 67-year old Guglielmetti got out of the can in 2014 after a near-decade on an extortion and drug case spawning out of his home state of Rhode Island. Vetere, 49, was sprung in July 2006 following a seven-year bid.

The post The Pryce Is Right In Philadelphia: Patriarca Wiseguy Makes Move From Massachusetts To Pennsylvania appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Boston mobster Pryce (Stretch) Quintina walked free this week. The veteran 77-year old Patriarca crime family soldier was released from an 18-month federal prison term for extortion to house-arrest status Tuesday morning. He’ll shed his monitoring bracelet on May 29.

Quintina worked directly on behalf of former New England mafia acting boss Anthony (Spucky) Spagnolo and was the nephew of deceased Patriarca crime family consigliere Charles (Q-Ball) Quintina. Stretch Quintina and his uncle “Q-Ball” went down together in a 1995 racketeering bust and both were present at the Patriarcas’ ill-fated fall 1989 induction ceremony held in a suburban Medford, Massachusetts home bugged by the FBI and used to lock up a slew of New England mob bigwigs.

In subsequent federal audio surveillance from 1992, the younger Quintina is heard asking a mob superior permission to “bounce this guy off the wall,” in reference to an indebted gambler. According to court records and FBI documents, he’s thought to have played a role in the Angelo Patrizzi murder from the spring of 1981, but was never charged.

The individual Quintina was requesting the go-ahead from to bounce his debtor off the wall, Alexander (Sonny Boy) Rizzo, on the other hand, would go on to be convicted in the Patrizzi hit. Patrizzi drew the ire of the Patriarca clan by vowing to avenge the killing of his half-brother years before and allegedly putting contracts on the heads of mob administrators he deemed responsible. Rizzo and Q-Ball Quintina were best friends.

In December 2015, Spucky Spagnolo and Stretch Quintina pled guilty to shaking down the Constitution Vending Co. for more than $50,000 in cash over an eight-year period and muscling the Revere Moose Lodge into remaining loyal to Constitution and not leaving for a better deal elsewhere for fear of reprisals. They were arrested in October 2014. Spagnolo, 75, is slated for release later this year in December. The Quintinas and Spagnolo were longtime residents of Revere, Massachusetts, just outside Boston.

The post Stretching His Legs: Boston Wiseguy ‘Stretch’ Quintina Leaves Prison On Heels Of Year-&-A-Half For Racketeering appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Avengers Motorcycle Club member Frank (Dr. Frankenstein) Bartels was charged with the first-degree murder of his wife this past week in a Genesee County, Michigan state court. Thirty-eight-year old Shane Bartels was suffocated to death on January 13, 2012. Facing the prospect of life in prison if convicted, he pled not guilty.

Frank Bartels, 51, is a member of the Flint, Michigan chapter of the Avengers MC and is currently behind bars on a federal weapons conviction. He was home at the time of his wife’s death and called 911, claiming it was a suicide and presenting responding police and medical personnel a hand-written note of hers he said he had found in his basement.

Upon a search of the residence, Flint’s Dr. Frankenstein was arrested for illegal firearm possession when authorities discovered a stolen pistol, two shotguns and a rifle without accompanying permits. Having a fellow Avenger named Raymond (Superman) Scarbrough falsify an affidavit claiming ownership of the guns at first, he eventually copped a plea and got slapped with a four-year sentence. His only previous run-in with the legal system was an assault conviction from 1980.

With less than six months to serve on his weapons conviction, Bartels is being held without bail in his murder case in the Genesee County Jail. Scarbrough, 43, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for selling a Tec-9 pistol to an undercover cop in December 2013. He walked free a little more than a year ago.

Flint is a factory town located about an hour’s drive north of Detroit. The Avengers are a mid-level biker gang based in the Midwest – the club was founded in Michigan by Ronald (Big Ron) Swalwell in 1967. The Flint chapter has been the focus of intense attention from law enforcement over the couple years or so. Back in the winter of 2015, four Flint Avengers were arrested for leading a violent raid of a perceive rival’s clubhouse. Then, in the spring of 2016, Flint Avengers member Donald (Spiderman) Huntley was busted for running a large home invasion ring. Huntley got arrested fleeing the scene of a burglary on his motorcycle in June 2015 and has repeatedly rebuffed attempts by the government to get him to turn over on Bartels, per sources.

The post Dr. Frankenstein Strikes In Michigan: Avengers MC Member Indicted For Killing His Wife appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The execution-style of murders of three Massachusetts Hells Angels in Florida in the spring of 1974 set off the ongoing blood feud between the West Coast-headquartered Hells Angels and their arch-rivals from the Midwest, the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. The biker war, still raging well into its fifth decade, has cost both clubs hundreds of violent fatalities apiece.

According to federal court records, the Outlaws South Florida chapter founder James (Big Jim) Nolan ordered the slayings of Lowell, Massachusetts Hells Angels chapter members George (Whiskey G) Hartman, Edwin (Riverboat) Riley and Albert (Oskie) Simmons on April 30, 1974. Hartman, Riley and Simmons had allegedly physically attacked a South Florida Outlaw at a New Year’s Eve party months before in New York City and were lured from a Ft. Lauderdale tavern to a nearby Broward County rock pit under the pretense of completing a drug transaction.

The three kidnapped Hells Angels were bound, gagged and each blown away with shotgun blasts to the back of the head– their bodies had been weighted down with concrete blocks to bury them within the sea of gravel. Informants told the FBI that Oskie Simmons had left the Hells Angels in the weeks after the New Year’s incident and Whiskey George Hartman and “RB” Riley traveled down to Florida to retrieve club-issued gear from him when they got what they thought was a peace offering from the Outlaws in a purported narcotics deal.

As a result of the hardcore hits, notorious Hells Angels Godfather Ralph (Sonny) Barger declared all-out war on the Outlaws from his nerve center in Oakland, California, instructing club members across the country to kill any Outlaw they encounter on site, per court records from the 1980s. Detroit-based Outlaws president Harry (Taco) Bowman, the only Outlaw to ever reach Barger’s iconic status nationally, amped up the conflict in the 1990s, delivering a famous impassioned December 1994 speech to a Florida hotel suite full of club brethren, encouraging them to increase hostilities with the Hells Angels coast-to-coast. Around this time, Bowman also placed a murder contract on Barger’s head that was never carried out.

The Lowell chapter of the Hells Angels was established in 1966 as the first of the historic biker club’s chapters on the East Coast. Locally, the Lowell Hells Angels refer to themselves as “The Bad Company.” Lowell is a working class mill town located in the northeastern section of Massachusetts. The Hells Angels are a California-based club and considered a staple in the darker side of West Coast pop culture.

The Outlaws were started in Chicago in the 1930s and by the late 1960s had planted a flag in Florida. A continued push eastward by the Hells Angels in the wake of the Lowell chapter opening created a cauldron of tension boiling to a frothy crescendo in the following decade.

Big Jim Nolan was put on trial for the triple homicide three times and after two mistrials was finally found not guilty by a jury. The revered 74-year old biker don would go on to be nailed on racketeering charges a decade later. He was released from a 36-year stay in prison last October.

Back in the 1970s, the rock-pit triple murder case against Nolan was built on the testimony of Outlaw turncoats Billy (Gator Mouth) Edson and Ralph (Lucifer) Yannotta, a pair of admitted triggermen in the heinous gangland massacre. Edson had gotten arrested in a non-related case in Canada in 1976 and flipped, naming himself, Yannotta and fellow Florida Outlaws Norman (Spider) Risinger and Henry (Funky Tim) Amis as those tasked by Big Jim to eliminate the three Hells Angels two years earlier.

Lucifer Yannotta followed Edson’s lead, took the stand against Nolan and entered the Witness Protection Program. Funky Tim Amis was convicted of the slayings and stabbed to death in a prison yard fight almost decade a later. Risinger went on the run from the law until 1991 when he was apprehended in a routine traffic stop in rural Indiana.

Taco Bowman, 67, has been in federal custody since 1999, convicted of racketeering and murder charges out of Tampa, Florida. The 78-year old Sonny Barger remains active in Hells Angels affairs today, having relocated from his beloved Oakland chapter to new home turf in Arizona.

The post Legendary Hells Angels-Outlaws Biker War Can Be Traced Back To 1974 Triple Murder In South Florida appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The longstanding biker war between the Hells Angels and the Outlaws was at a boiling point in the early 1980s after a Hells Angel allegedly killed an Outlaw in cold blood in Toledo, Ohio. Hells Angels Cleveland chapter initiate Jack (Jack-O-Lantern) Gentry was put on trial 35 years ago this fall for the first-degree murder of Toledo Outlaw Ralph (Real Time) Tanner on November 30, 1980. Informants claimed Gentry “rolled his bones” by killing the 25-year old Tanner behind the Outlaws’ Toledo clubhouse as a means of getting his full patch.

The trial held in a Lucas County, Ohio circuit court in late October 1982 drew droves of Hells Angels into the thick of the Outlaws Midwest stronghold to show support for Gentry, who was acquitted of all charges in a four-day proceeding. The Hells Angels are known as a West Coast biker gang, headquartering club affairs out of California. The triple homicide of three Massachusetts Hells Angels in Florida in the spring of 1974 started a war with the Outlaws, historically headquartered out of Chicago and Detroit, that has still yet to cease and boasts a body count well into the hundreds.

Infamous Hells Angel West Coast Godfather Ralph (Sonny) Barger and the club’s biggest East Coast boss of the time period, Sandy Alexander, both attended Gentry’s trial in Toledo. Barger and his large and rowdy California contingent rented a house on Sylvania Street and caused quite a stir with their presence. One female juror was excused from duty after her brother was accosted by a group of Hells Angels in a downtown Toledo bar and threatened to make sure his sister “voted the right way” in deliberations. Upon the jury coming back with a not guilty verdict, Barger through a party for Gentry at the Sheraton Hotel in the area and even sent invitations to the jurors, whose addresses the club was somehow able to ascertain.

Due to proximity, the Outlaws’ Toledo chapter comes under the auspice of Detroit. The state of Michigan is the club’s most dominant region, successfully fending off all attempts from the Hells Angels to infiltrate its borders. The closest Hells Angels chapter to Detroit is the Cleveland chapter, founded in 1967 with the merging of local clubs, the Animals and the Gooses. Toledo is roughly 90 miles from both Detroit and Cleveland.

According to court testimony, Gentry and other Cleveland Hells Angels stalked their Outlaw targets for weeks leading up to Tanner’s slaying, dispatching squads of bikers from Cleveland to Toledo on recognizance missions. Former Hells Angels Cleveland chapter vice president Clarence (Butch) Crouch testified that Gentry bragged to him about killing Tanner, waved around a newspaper clipping detailing the crime and was publically acknowledged and congratulated for the deed at a club meeting, all in the days after it occurred. Gentry even admitted to bobbling the murder weapon per his own account of the events as recounted in Crouch’s testimony.

Living under an assumed name in Texas, Crouch shot himself and his wife and stepson in a murder-suicide in 2013. Back in the 1960s, the native of the Louisiana Bayou helped jumpstart the Hells Angels muscle in the Midwest with the opening of the Cleveland chapter, assigned to come to Ohio and oversee the combining of the Animals and the Gooses by Sonny Barger himself.

The post Biker War Hit The Heartland In First Part Of 1980s: Outlaws’ Murder In Toledo Ohio Brought Hells Angels To Town En Masse For Trial appeared first on The Gangster Report.

New England mafia soldier Ralph (Ralphie Chong) Lamattina died of natural causes earlier this month (April 10, 2017). He was a ripe 94 years old and came from the Patriarca crime family’s Boston wing. Longtime Boston Herald mob scribe Howie Carr first reported Ralphie Chong’s passing in Sunday’s paper.

From the 1960s into the 1980s, Lamattina belonged to deceased captain Larry Zannino’s North End crew and did two years in state prison for being an accessory after the fact in the 1966 double murder of Arthur (Tash) Bratsos and Thomas (Tommy D) De Prisco and five years as a guest of the federal government for a racketeering conviction. Lamattina went on the run from his 1984 RICO bust for more than a decade, fleeing to Florida, then Italy before finally landing in federal custody in the mid-1990s. The man nicknamed for eyes his friends told him made him look Asian had been free since June 2000.

Bratsos and his bodyguard De Prisco were part of turncoat gangster and hit man Joe (The Animal) Barboza’s ragtag crew and were slain inside Ralphie Chong’s Nite Lite Cafe, a popular after-hours joint and social club, for shaking down area businesses in an effort to raise bail money for the Portuguese Barboza . The hits were ordered by Zannino, a rival of Bratsos’ for years after Zannino killed his older brother Jimmy in the 1950s. Barboza himself was shot-gunned to death in 1976 outside his San Francisco apartment where he was living in hiding under an assumed identity.

FBI files and Massachusetts State Police documents paint Lamattina as Zannino’s most trusted lieutenant and the man in charge of his crew’s gambling and loansharking operations in the 1970s and early 1980s. According to these records, multiple informants pointed to Ralphie Chong as the direct overseer of a weekly high-stakes poker game hosted at Zannino’s headquarters on N. Margin Street in the North End during that period. His younger brother Joseph (Joe Black) Lamattina, 86, was also a key member of the Zannino crew in its powerful North End heyday. Joe Black died of natural causes two years ago.

Zannino was caught on FBI audio surveillance filling in Ralphie Chong in on the details of the 1981 gangland slaying of local underworld rogue Angelo Patrizzi.

“We clipped him, nine guys…tied ’em up and put him in the trunk (of a car), don’t say nothing more about it,” he was heard dishing.

Patrizzi vowed to kill the Boston mobsters he held responsible for the execution of his half- brother years before while he was away in prison, but got himself killed instead. New England mafia underboss Jerry Angiulo was convicted of ordering Patrizzi’s murder. Steely-eyed Larry Zannino was known on the streets as Angiulo’s muscle.

Upon Ralphie Chong going on the lam in 1984, Zannino was promoted to consigliere of the whole Patriarca clan. Zannino died behind bars in 1996.

Authorities accused South Florida restaurateur and reputed mob associate Richard (Dick Cami) Camillucci of harboring and aiding abetting Lamattina’s run from the law in the 1980s. Charged by the feds for allegedly helping Ralphie Chong acquire a fake driver’s license and passport, Camillucci had actor Wilford Brimley (The Natural, The Thing) testify as a character witness at his trial and was found not guilty. Camillucci’s father-in-law was John (Johnny Photo) Biello, a Genovese crime family button man based in Miami who once owned New York’s iconic Peppermint Lounge on W. 45th Street and was killed gangland style in March 1967.

Ralph “Ralphie Chong” Lamattina

The post The China Syndrome: Beantown Mobster ‘Ralphie Chong’ Lamattina Checks Out Of The Game At 94 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Recently-deceased Boston mob figure Ralph (Ralphie Chong) Lamattina helped his bosses in the Patriarca crime family kill two local rival racketeers inside his Nite Lite Café on the outskirts of the North End in the 1960s. Greek gangster Arthur (Tash) Bratsos and his bodyguard Thomas (Tommy D) De Prisco were lured to the Nite Lite Café and shot, stabbed and beaten on the night of November 15, 1966 after the pair had been extorting area businesses and Bratsos beefed with Ralphie Chong’s direct superior in the Patriarca clan, Larry Zannino, a mafia captain in the North End.

Lamattina died peacefully in his sleep at 94 years old back on April 10. He served two years in Massachusetts state prison for being an accessory after the fact in the slayings of Bratsos and De Prisco and in the 1960s ran two North End area mob haunts, the Nite Lite Café, an after-hours bar on Commercial Street, and the nearby Enrico’s Social Club.

Tash Bratsos, 36, and Tommy De Prisco, 25, belonged to independent mobster and highly-feared frequent Patriarca syndicate hired-hand Joe (The Animal) Barboza’s crew. Bratsos looked after the crew’s loansharking affairs.

The Portuguese Barboza was locked up on a parole violation in the weeks before the hits at the Nite Lite Cafe when police caught him with a gun at a traffic stop, leaving members of his inner circle unprotected. Starting with Bratsos and De Prisco, they began being picked off. Joe the Animal soon joined Team USA and entered the Witness Protection Program.

Bratsos had been in a decade-long feud with Larry Zannino because Zannino allegedly killed Bratsos’ big brother Jimmy Bratsos in March 1954 and buried him on his family’s farm in Stoughton, Massachusetts over the belief that the elder Bratsos cooperated with police following surviving a previous attempt on his life three years earlier. According to court records, Zannino summoned Tash Bratsos and Tommy De Prisco from a tavern in East Boston to Ralphie Chong’s Nite Lite Café on the evening of November 15, 1966 and fired the first shot in the infamous New England underworld double homicide carried out by a dozen North End wiseguys.

Bratsos and De Prisco had been frantically trying to raise $100,000 bail money in order to spring Barboza in the days preceding their murders. The afternoon of November 15, they were reportedly in an East Boston bar bragging of the close to $85,000 that had come up with by shaking down local businesses, even displaying the collected cash on a table. One FBI informant recounted Ralphie Chong grabbing ahold of Bratsos and De Prisco’s fellow Barboza crew member Joe (Chico) Amico by the neck and Zaninno unloading into Bratsos with his gun as how the executions began.

Amico survived the Nite Lite Café slayings, slipping free from Lamattina’s grasp and bolting out the door, per the informant, but wouldn’t be so lucky two months later, felled by up-and-coming East Boston button man Joe (J.R.) Russo with his signature carbine rifle as he left a Revere, Massachusetts watering hole. Russo would go on to be a capo in the Patriarca Family and for a short time, the New England mafia’s consigliere. He died in prison in 1998. Barboza was killed living under an assumed name in San Francisco in 1976, allegedly by Russo and his carbine

The badly battered bodies of Tash Bratsos and Tommy De Prisco were stuffed in Bratsos’ black-colored Cadillac, driven to South Boston’s Lower End neighborhood and abandoned. The corpses were discovered by authorities within hours and police encountered Ralphie Chong and his mob buddy Johnny Cincotti scrubbing the Nite Lite Café floor and front entryway clean of blood when they arrived to question them.

Lamattina and Bratsos had been neighbors in suburban Medford. The bail money extorted by Bratsos and De Prisco intended for Barboza reportedly got split between the numerous participants in the fall 1966 gangland purge.

Larry Zannino (died in 1996), like Russo, passed away behind the bars of a federal correctional facilities serving time for racketeering. He preceded Russo as the syndicate’s consigliere. Lamattina was indicted on racketeering charges in 1984 along Cincotti and after a decade on the run from the law as a fugitive, he did five years in a federal penitentiary, getting released in the summer of 2000.

The post The Nite Lite Café Murders: Boston Mafia Lieutenant ‘Ralphie Chong’s’ North End Hangout Site Of 1966 Bloodletting appeared first on The Gangster Report.

After 16 years on the run from the law, former Outlaws Motorcycle Club South Side Chicago chapter president Orville (The Anvil) Cochran was finally caught by authorities this week when he was arrested for shoplifting a back brace from a Windy City Meijer superstore in Evergreen Park. The 67-year old Cochran had been a fugitive since the summer of 2001 after fleeing a racketeering, drug and murder indictment out of Milwaukee and is a suspect in at least three gangland slayings.

If convicted of the charges pending against him, the man some in club circles call “O.G. Orvie,” faces life imprisonment. He’s being held without bail in Chicago’s Metro Detention Center awaiting extradition to the Cheese State.

The year before he was indicted, Cochran survived an assassination attempt in front of the Outlaws’ South Side Chicago clubhouse. Back in the 1990s, he fought on the frontlines of the Outlaws’ war with the Hells Angels in Illinois, Wisconsin and beyond. One of the murders Cochran is believed to have played a part in occurred in New York. Beginning in the 1970s, the Midwest-based Outlaws have tried to block the West Coast-headquartered Hells Angels at every turn from making inroads moving east. Chicago, the birthplace of the Outlaws original charter, has been a key battle ground in the epic biker war.

The ill will between the two clubs spiked in the mid-1990s, resulting in a series of bombings and executions. According to court records and ATF files, Cochran led an Outlaws firebombing campaign against the Hells Angels and their affiliate club in Illinois, the Hell’s Henchmen, as well as participated in the murder conspiracies of rival bikers Michael (Mad Mike) Quale, Jack (4-by-4) Castle and Thomas (Westside Tommy) Stimac.

Quale and Castle were Hells Angels. Stimac was a one-time Outlaws chapter president who had fallen out of favor with club administrators. The Quale homicide, which took place in a melee at a New York racetrack, is the only one of the three charged in Cochran’s current case.

Orville Cochran

Prior to going on the run in June 2001, Cochran was employed by the then-notoriously mobbed up McCormick Place convention center on the shores of Lake Michigan in downtown Chicago, the largest such venue in all of North America. The Chicago Outlaws has long had a working relationship with the local Italian mafia.

Mad Mike Quale, the 44-year old president of the Hells Angels’ Rochester, New York chapter was stabbed to death in a massive violent fracas between the Hells Angels and Outlaws at the Lancaster Speedway near Buffalo on the afternoon of September 25, 1994. In the same fight, Outlaws’ Western New York chapter president Walter (Buffalo Wally) Posnjak was shot to death.

Jack 4-by-4 Castle had recently patched over from the Hell’s Henchmen to the Hells Angels when he was killed on the morning of March 3, 1995 in Schiller Park on Chicago’s Northwest side. Castle was shot behind the wheel of his car outside a trucking company he was employed at while eating a donut and drinking a cup of coffee. In the years after Castle, 39, was slain, the Chicago Outlaws’ former South Side chapter president Carl (Jamming Jay) Warneke became a witness for the government and admitted to stewarding the Castle murder conspiracy to fruition.

Westside Tommy Stimac was gunned down on the back porch of his Lemont Township, Illinois home on the evening of July 27, 1999. The 47-year old Stimac was credited for cementing the Outlaws’ ties to the Chicago mafia in the 1970s. He did nine years in federal prison for heading a prostitution ring. At the time of his death, he owned a business that helped truckers secure equipment for their trips cross-country.

The post Chicago Biker Boss Apprehended Following Decade-&-A-Half As Fugitive, ’90s Outlaws Leader Looked At In Three Murders appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Orville (The Anvil) Cochran, the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club president in the late 1990s and early 2000s just apprehended after 16 years as a fugitive, was directly involved in the stabbing death of an east coast Hells Angels leader at the infamous 1994 Lancaster National Speedway biker brawl in New York, according to his 2001 racketeering indictment. Cochran, 67, was brought into custody earlier this week after an arrest for shoplifting in Evergreen Park.

When the dust finally settled at the Lancaster National Speedway – located in Lancaster, New York, near Buffalo –, almost two and a half decades ago, two combatants were dead: Hells Angels Rochester chapter president Michael (Mad Mike) Quale and Outlaws Western New York chapter president Walter (Buffalo Wally) Posnjak, both 44. Quale had been stabbed over a dozen times. Posnjak died from a gunshot wound to his chest.

The Outlaws and the Hells Angels, the two biggest biker gangs in the United States, have been at war for more than 40 years. The Hells Angels started on the West Coast, while the Outlaws were founded in Chicago. Expansion eastward by the Hells Angels, the world’s most iconic motorcycle club, fanned the flames of discontent and by the mid-1970s, the two gangs were engaged in open warfare across the country.

Tensions in the feud began to crest in the early 1990s. In 1993, a Hells Angel was badly beaten by a group of Outlaws in Wisconsin which set the stage for over a year of intense acrimony climaxing in the fall 1994 Lancaster Speedway slayings and a string of subsequent car bombings in Illinois. Months following the Wisconsin assault, legendary Outlaws International President Harry (Taco) Bowman addressed hundreds of his men inside a Florida hotel suite on New Year’s Eve, demanding an increase in hostilities towards the Hells Angels around the globe and placing an alleged $100,000 bounty on the head of Hells Angels Godfather Ralph (Sonny) Barger.

Prior to the 1990s, the Hells Angels only presence in the Midwest was in Ohio and Wisconsin. The club’s decision to “patch over” Illinois’ Hell’s Henchmen MC to Hells Angels status in the wake of Bowman’s New Year’s pronouncement only heightened the stakes.

On June 28, 1994, Hell’s Henchmen Rockford, Illinois chapter president LaMont (Merciless Monte) Mathias, the point man in the biker club merger, was beaten and shot to death inside his MC Cycles bike shop. Rockford is located in between Chicago and Milwaukee. In response to the Mathias hit, the Hells Angels bombed the tattoo parlor of Milwaukee Outlaws member Peter (Debris) Gross and tossed a hand grenade into the home of Buffalo Wally Posnjak in New York. Posjnak. born in Ohio, and Taco Bowman, who led his Outlaws empire from his hometown of Detroit, were close friends and Bowman leaned on him to be his mouthpiece on the east coast.

Buffalo Wally Posnjak

The weekend beginning September 23, 1994 saw dozens of both Outlaws and Hells Angels descent on Lancaster, New York for the festivities at the Lancaster National Speedway featuring the All-Harley Drag Racing Association championship flights. Outlaws’ from as far as Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin came to the Buffalo area for the races.

The bad blood began spilling over on the evening of September 24 with a dustup between respective club lieutenants at a local bar. The unrelenting ill will boiled over into a full-blown riot the next morning at the race track. The Outlaws arrived in the speedway parking lot at around 8:30 a.m. on September 25, 1994 and started partying. At approximately 9:00 a.m., the Hells Angels made their entrance and the two clubs began filling into the infield pit in anticipation of the first race at 10:00 a.m.

The starting flag never dropped. Before the Harleys roared their engines that day, fists were thrown, shots rang out and pedestrians, including women and children, were ducking for cover.

Per witness accounts, at roughly 9:30 a.m., Buffalo Wally Posnjak and his Outlaws crew got into a verbal spat with Hells Angels Rochester chapter luminary Robert (Big Bob) Herold and his men that erupted into violence and ignited the entire racecourse rumble. Soon, Mad Mie Quale, Herold’s best friend, was killed when two Outlaws repeatedly plunged their buck knives into his neck, heart, stomach and lungs and Posnjak was shot in the chest from 10-feet away, as almost a hundred bikers around them brawled with weapons and their hands for nearly an hour. Lancaster National Speedway officials immediately closed the track and cancelled the day’s race activities.

Besides the murders of Quale and Posnjak, eight others were hospitalized with serious injuries, 15 people were arrested and six eventually faced criminal prosecutions for their roles in the violence. Police confiscated an artillery of guns, baseball bats, brass knuckles, ax handles and knives from the sod and gravel battlefield in the aftermath of the clash.

Big Bob Herold was put on trial in New York for shooting and killing Buffalo Wally Posnjak, but acquitted at a spring 1996 trial, despite the murder weapon (a 44-cailber pistol) being discovered on his bedroom dresser in a raid. Mad Mike Quale succeeded Herold as president of the Hells Angels in Rochester and Herold physically carried Quale 100 yards from the speedway infield to a car to drive him to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead. Informants told the FBI that Southside Chicago Outlaw Orville Cochran and Indiana Outlaw Donald (Big Don) Fogg were the ones that dealt the fatal blows to Quale in the melee.

Mad Mike Quale

Fogg was in a vehicle stopped by New York State Police highway patrolmen some 50 miles away from the speedway that afternoon of the fight in which Quale’s bloodied Hells Angels’ vest was found. Less than six months later, Big Don Fogg was killed himself on orders of Taco Bowman in a “housecleaning measure,” after Fogg was heard boasting of his role in Quale’s stabbing.

Cochran is currently incarcerated in Chicago awaiting extradition to Milwaukee where he was originally indicted for murder, racketeering and narcotics trafficking in June 2001. Bowman, 67, is serving life in prison today.

In addition to the Quale slaying, Cochran is also charged with the March 1995 homicide of Northwest Chicago Hells Angel Jack (4-by-4) Castle, a former Hell’s Henchmen helping head the club’s transition in becoming part of the Hells Angels family. The Castle hit capped a half-year of turbulence on the heels of the altercation at the racetrack, following three bombing attacks on the Illinois Hell’s Henchmen in the final months preceding the club patching over to Hells Angels.

Bowman stripped an Outlaws affiliate club called the Fifth Chapter of its affiliate rights when he saw a newspaper photo of Fifth Chapter members attending Mad Mike Quale’s funeral. James (Big Frank) Wheeler, Bowman’s successor as international president of the Outlaws, was convicted in 2003 out of Tampa of being one of the coordinators of the speedway violence as part of his racketeering case.

The post The Lancaster National Speedway Slayings: Hells Angels-Outlaws Biker War Peaked In 1990s With Racetrack Fight appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The downfall of Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman, the world’s biggest drug lord in modern history, can ultimately be traced to his relationship with the young, savvy and industrious Flores brothers in Chicago, his main wholesale supply dispensers in the United State during the 2000s. Pedro (Little Pete) Flores and Margarito (Junior) Flores, identical 34-year-old twins from Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, rapidly ascended up the food chain of the international narcotics trade and by the time they were in their early 20s they were working directly for the iconic and notoriously lethal El Chapo, the leader of Mexico’s practically-monolithic Sinaloa Cartel, and flooding the streets of America with thousands kilos of cocaine and heroin a month.

In 2008, the Flores brothers cut a deal with the U.S. government and began cooperating with authorities in building a case against the infamous narco czar. Over the next year, they recorded 70 phone calls with El Chapo and his top lieutenants. After a number of escapes, El Chapo was finally taken back into custody by Mexican police in January 2016. He was extradited to New York three months ago where he pled not guilty to charges of racketeering and drug trafficking in federal court. The Flores’ are in a witness protection unit doing a 14-year prison sentences and are slated to be the prosecution’s two star witnesses at El Chapo’s trial.

Below are transcripts from two phone calls documenting incriminating conversations between El Chapo and Little Pete Flores where the two discuss drugs, money and product quality.

Call 1

Nov 15, 2008

El Chapo – Hello

Pedro Flores – Hello

El Chapo – Hey, how are you my friend?

Pedro Flores – What’s up, how are you?

El Chapo – Good, good. It’s nice to talk to you. How is your brother?

Pedro Flores – Everyone is fine. It’s too bad I wasn’t able to see you the other day (with my brother)

El Chapo – Oh….it’s ok. I’m here at your service right now. You know that right?

Pedro Flores – Yes, of course. Everything is perfect. It’s always nice talking to you. Hey, look, I’m bothering you because of what I picked up the other day from over there. I have the check ready….but I want to ask you for a favor.

El Chapo – Ask me

Pedro Flores – Do you think we can work something out where we deduct five (thousand dollars per kilo)?

El Chapo – What did we agree on before?

Pedro Flores – You were going to give them to me for 55 ($55,000)

El Chapo – How much are you going to pay?

Pedro Flores – Well, if you agree, I’ll pay 50 for them. The check’s ready to go

El Chapo – Do you have the money now?

Pedro Flores – If you give them to me with the difference of five, I can pay right away. And if you want to send me more….

El Chapo – Alright, how much did they give you already?

Pedro Flores – They gave me 20 (kilos)

El Chapo – How much did you say?

Pedro Flores – 20

El Chapo – I’ll pick the money up tomorrow, that’s fine

Pedro Flores – Yes? We’re good?

El Chapo – That price is fine

Pedro Flores – Okay, I really appreciate it. It’s because the other guy gave me something that didn’t turn out so good and I have to even it out on our end

El Chapo – Do you have a way of getting that money over here (to Mexico)?

Pedro Flores – Over there? Yes, of course

El Chapo – Ok, so you’ll give it to me over here then?

Pedro Flores – Yeah, just give me a couple days and I’ll have it there. I have it right here. Better yet, I have a check that is coming in. If you want, as soon as I get it, I can advance you something. I have like 400 ($400,000) coming today.

El Chapo – Look, hold on, I’m going to talk to someone right now. There might be someone who can pick that money up over there (in the United States). Hold on, I’ll call you back.

Call 2

November 17, 2008

Pedro Flores – Hey, Hello, hello?

El Chapo – Hello my friend

Pedro Flores – I just have three left (3 kilos remaining to sell). When do you think we can receive something again?

El Chapo – What the fuck? I thought that’s all you could get rid of right now, that little bit we gave you?

Pedro Flores – The truth is we’re doing pretty well, why should I lie?

El Chapo – How much can you get rid of in a month?

Pedro Flores – If you want, if it’s the same amount we talked about the other day, around 40

El Chapo – Oh, that’s good. Has anyone else being sending you stuff? Because that guy told me they were sending you those things

Pedro Flores – Yes, but what they sent wasn’t good. It doesn’t compare to what you have.

El Chapo – Alright, I’ll send it then

Pedro Flores – Do you think they might have an extra seven (kilos) they can give me?

El Chapo – Yes, I’ll add seven (to the order) and I’ll send it to you this week.

Pedro Flores – Okay, please, sir. Thanks a lot, my friend.

El Chapo – This is fine. We’re good.

The post The One & Only ‘El Chapo’ Talks: Historic Drug Boss Caught On Wire With Chicago Twins Talking Business appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The infamous Outlaws Motorcycle Club first made national headlines 50 years ago with the barbaric crucifixion assault of a teenage girl in Juniper, Florida, foreshadowing the reckless debauchery the biker gang would become known for in future decades. Five Outlaws were arrested for nailing 19-year old Christine Deese to a tree at a park in the city’s Juno Beach neighborhood on November 14, 1967. The incident drew media attention around the country for its sheer brutality and the personal ire of Florida’s then-sitting Governor Claude Kirk.

The Outlaws had just landed in the Sunshine State the year before when the Chicago-founded club dispatched Donald (Deke) Tanner to Florida to plant a flag down south in a region that would soon grow to be a biker hotbed and key battleground state in the race for gangland cycle supremacy in North America. Tanner teamed with an area biker boss named James (Big Jim) Nolan, who led a local club called the Iron Cross, to start the Outlaws’ first chapter in Florida. Nolan, 74, was released from a 35-year stay in prison last fall.

Back in the summer of 1967, Tanner and Nolan got together and consolidated the Iron Crosses with three other local biker gangs, the Half Breeds, the Cossacks and the Outcasts into the South Florida Outlaws, setting up camp in several cottages clustered behind Kitty’s Saloon in Juno Beach, the new chapter’s main hangout in the early days. Christine Deese dated Florida Outlaw Norman (Spider) Risinger, one of Big Jim Nolan’s top enforcers. She upset Risinger by not giving him $10 he believed she owed him.

On the afternoon of November 14, 1967, Spider Risinger and four of his Outlaw brothers, Francis (Fat Frank) Link, Don (Mangy) Graves, Joe (Squirrel) Sorsby and John (Crazy Johnny) Wables kidnapped Deese from Kitty’s Saloon, beat her and then literally nailed her to a tree in the woods. After 15 minutes, they let her go, congratulating her for not screaming for help.

It wasn’t long before she did. Deese reported the incident to local police and arrest warrants were issued for Risinger, Link, Graves, Sorsby and Wables.

The Outlaws en route to their arraignment

Like Risinger, Link was a Florida Outlaw. Mangy Graves, Squirrel Sorsby and Crazy Johnny Wables, on the other hand, were from the club’s Detroit chapter. Risinger and Link were arrested within days of the assault. The three Motown bikers went on the run for two weeks and were finally brought into custody in Michigan, found being hidden by the Renegades, an Outlaws affiliate club in Detroit.

Upon being extradited from Detroit to Florida, the trio of Motor City Outlaws were met at the Ft. Lauderdale airport by Governor Kirk, who in a face-to-face meeting in a cargo holding terminal personally vowed to boot the biker gang out of the state. Months prior, Kirk had kicked the Hells Angels out of Florida after the California-headquartered club attracted bad press in the area for the accidental killing of a young girl by an errant gunshot in the midst of a brawl at a Pompano Beach migrant campground.

Deke Tanner and South Florida Hells Angel-turned-Outlaw John (Johnny Shades) Luke were indicted alongside the five Outlaws charged with the Deese assault, accused of dealing marijuana and running a prostitution ring out of Kitty’s Saloon. Tanner was defended by renowned Texas criminal defense attorney Richard (Racehorse) Haynes.

Mangy Graves testified for the prosecution at the 1968 trial in exchange for probation. The charges against Crazy Johnny Wables were dropped before the case got to court. Everybody else was convicted and sentenced to prison terms – nobody did more than six years. Governor Kirk never successfully vanquished the Outlaws from Florida, but did succeed in shutting down Kitty’s Saloon, forcing the chapter to move to its current locale in West Palm Beach.

Spider Risinger was allegedly one of the triggermen in the shotgun massacre of three visiting Hells Angels from Massachusetts in 1974. The triple-murder occurred at a Broward County rock and gravel pit as revenge for the physical assault of a Florida Outlaw at a New Year’s Eve party in New York City months before and set off the now-epic biker war between the two clubs. Big Jim Nolan was put on trial three times for ordering the Hells Angels triple homicide, however at two mistrials, he was acquitted of all charges. Risinger went on the run for almost two decades until his capture in Indiana in 1991.

Cover photo credit: One-time Outlaws in-house photogorapher “Flash” Mitiff

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