The Hells Angels is the biggest biker gang in the world and has always been primarily associated with the USA. Indeed, when we think of highway crime in the UK, we’re probably more likely to call to mind figures like Dick Turpin from yesteryear. But despite its all-American image, the Hells Angels now have a reported global membership of more than 6,000 bikers in almost 60 countries – including the UK. Read on to find out more about the origins of one of the most dangerous crime gangs in Britain, as well as their attempts to cultivate a pristine public image and the frequent media controversies and court cases which undermine them.
As unlikely as it sounds, the first time the Hells Angels set foot on British soil was at the request of pop sensations The Beatles. The Fab Four have rubbed shoulders with a wide variety of famous faces, including Queen Elizabeth II, but the rough-and-ready biker gang are perhaps one of their more surprising acquaintances. The Beatle responsible is even more of an eyebrow-raiser. John Lennon might be traditionally thought of as the more hedonistic and headstrong of the lineup, but it was actually George Harrison – often known as the quietest and most retiring of the group – who extended the invitation. However, when a gaggle of bikers eventually turned up at Apple Corps studios, the roles were quickly reversed back to normal. At a Christmas party, Lennon very nearly suffered a punch in the face from an aggrieved Angel, while Harrison failed to even put in an appearance.
This now infamous visit occurred in 1968, but the first British chapters of the gang followed hot on its heels the next year. An East London chapter and a South London chapter sprang up in 1969 and, over the next few decades, plenty more followed. By 1995, it was believed that at least 12 chapters consisting of 250 members were in existence. Today, those figures are likely to have swelled significantly. At the very least, the Angels are known to have factions in Ashfield, Essex, Kent, Lea Valley, London, Manchester, Northampton, Southampton, Tyne and Wear, Wales, Wessex, Windsor and Wolverhampton, as well as a so-called 'Nomad Chapter' which covers the length and breadth of the UK.
One of the principal reasons that the Hells Angels have spread so quickly throughout Britain is their uncharacteristically benign public image in the country. According to one of the lead officers of the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) tasked with monitoring biker crime in the 1990s, the group were viewed as largely harmless. This is at stark odds with how the Angels are perceived in almost all other countries where they are present. In turn, they have been at pains to encourage this British image of themselves as lovable rogues and nothing more threatening. Indeed, the then-president of the London chapter, Alan ‘Snob’ Fisher, even took part in the Queen’s 2002 jubilee parade, raising money for a children’s charity in the process. Meanwhile, the most notable Hells Angel in the UK was surely Ian ‘Maz’ Harris, up until his death in 2000. A frequent spokesperson for the group, Harris held the rare distinction of being an Angel with a PhD. His dissertation at Warwick University was entitled Myth and Reality in the Motorcycle Subculture.
But despite these carefully cultivated attempts at portraying a family-friendly image to the public, there is undoubtedly a darker side to the gang. Quite aside from their penchant for hedonistic partying and vehicle-based noise pollution, the Angels have been implicated in all kinds of court cases, from rape and murder to theft and drug trafficking. As such, they’re widely regarded as one of the most dangerous criminal groups in the UK. While it would be impossible to fit all of the various scandals, controversies and allegations levelled at the Angels into a single article of this size, here’s a very brief rundown of some of their more notorious exploits:
Of course, the Angels have always blamed these controversies on the actions of individuals, claiming that while they may have a few bad apples among their ranks, they’re largely a peaceful organisation. Indeed, ‘When we do right, nobody remembers… when we do wrong, nobody forgets’ is one of their more effective slogans.
An Undercover Mission
HANDING over a bloodied jacket to his terrifying Hells Angels cronies, Jay Dobyns’ heart raced as he described how he had gunned down a drug-running ‘rival’. But the ‘kill’ was a mock execution, caught on camera for his new pals’ benefit, and Jay was an undercover cop who was risking his life to infiltrate the most secretive and brutal biker gang in the world.
While the Hells Angels have always insisted they are not criminals but rebels railing against a society, law enforcement officers claim that is propaganda which hides murder, rape, drug trafficking, gun running and extortion on a huge scale. And when a mass riot between the Hells Angels and their bitter rivals, the Mongols, left three bikers dead and dozens injured in Laughlin, Nevada, in 2002, cops were desperate to crack down. They knew that the only way to bring the Hells Angels to justice was to get inside their inner circle. And the federal agent tasked with infiltrating the ruthless gang was Jay Dobyns, who has shared his story for a new Sky History documentary Secrets of the Hells Angels.
“My cover story was that I was a gun runner and that I was a debt collector,” he says. “The Hells Angels decided all on their own that I was a hit man. By the time I arrived on the Hells Angels’ radar they had a 50 year history of violence and intimidation. If the Hells Angels had discovered we were cops they would have drawn a straight razor across my throat. They would kill their own. If you betray them, if you violate their trust or their brotherhood, it doesn’t matter if you have a Hells Angels patch on your back or not, they will kill you.”
While the Hells Angels were predominantly white, the Mongols were mainly Hispanic Vietnam war veterans - with years of LA street know-how behind them. Founded in LA as a rival, Mongols were the most violent biker gang next to the Hells Angels, and making them the mortal enemy. All hell broke loose on a biker run in Laughlin, Nevada, when dozens of Hells Angels swarmed a casino where the Mongols were staying. Bullets were flying, slot machines were blowing up and the riot was filmed by hundreds of CCTV cameras in the casino. Police later seized 14 guns, 107 knives as well as hammers and wrenches. One Mongol was stabbed to death and two Hells Angels died from gunshot wounds. It was the worst shooting inside a Nevada casino in history.
Jay Dobyns says: “The game changed for us after the Laughlin Riot because it made our investigation very easy to sell to the higher ups. The Hells Angels were operating violently with impunity. They needed to be investigated.” So the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) set up the unprecedented undercover mission - Operation Black Biscuit - to target the Hells Angels from the inside. “There’s been plenty of biker infiltrations,” says Jay Dobyns. “Never in the most notorious motorcycle gang this planet will ever know. People that do what I do for a living and treat it like a hobby end up dead. When I first started interacting with the Hells Angels I asked their leadership, what are my instructions if I cross paths with a Mongol? And he said their name does not cross our lips. They’re the girls. And it is your job to kill girls. As long as there is life on earth, the Hells Angels and the Mongols are going to be spilling blood.”
Setting Up a Puppet Club
The initial plan was to set up a ‘puppet club’ biker gang - Solo Angels - to run side by side with the Hells Angels in Arizona. Author and attorney Kerrie Droban explains: “Puppet clubs are very valuable to the Hells Angels, because they already know they've been vetted. Maybe they've been to several runs so they know who these people are. So it kind of bypasses a lot of the worry that they're going to be informants or law enforcement. Setting up a legitimate puppet club to infiltrate a legitimate biker gang was incredibly novel and had never been done before. This ruse was incredibly risky.” “I understood that as long as they believed my lie, I was safe,” says Jay Dobyns. “But that if I slipped up, there was gonna be a price to pay for that.”
Jay and his team started mimicking what the Hells Angels were doing. If the Hells Angels sold t-shirts, they sold t-shirts, if they handed out support stickers so did Jay and his team, and they even threw wild parties and invited the Angels to be their guests. “We ran an extensive street theatre operation,” he says. “Street theatre is where we in law enforcement would set up skits that appeared to be crime events. Selling drugs, buying drugs, selling guns, buying guns. And we would allow the Hells Angels to witness us creating inaccurate conclusions from accurate observations.”
With his innate ability to stay in character 24/7, Jay was getting closer and closer to the inner circle of the gang. He befriended Mesa Hells Angels president Bad Bob Johnston, who started to mentor him. “All you had to do was mention that name and it struck fear in people,” says Jay. “Everyone knew Bad Bob. He had a 25-man charter, a beautiful clubhouse. He would open doors for me in the Hells Angels world that I wasn't capable of opening on my own. He was mentoring me. I said to him, you are one of the most powerful Hells Angels in America. Show me how to run a charter. Show me how to be the baddest biker on the planet.”
The Role of a Fake Girlfriend
But one aspect of life as a Hells Angel that Jay struggled with was their attitude to women. He was a husband and a father and did not want to harm the women the Hells Angels expected him to go with. He needed an undercover agent to pose as his fake girlfriend - and that was Jenna Maguire.
Jay says: “Jenna Maguire was relatively freshly out of the academy. She was highly intelligent. She had street smarts. But probably the biggest asset was that she was absolutely fearless. And so, I slowly started introducing Jenna and exposing Jenna to the Hells Angels.” Jenna adds: “I wanted to try out undercover, and this was a chance to try and work some undercover with one of the agents that we all knew was one of the best at it. So, I was excited for this opportunity.”
But the biggest risk to Jenna would be the Hells Angels’ attitude to women. “If you come to a Hells Angels clubhouse, you know certain things are possibly going to happen,” she says. “Your body’s going to be treated like an amusement park, and by several members possibly. Sex could be consensual, it could be rape.”
Jenna was ‘trained’ by some of the other wives and girlfriends - walk a step behind your man, don’t speak when he is speaking, provide his food and drink, carry his drugs and his gun.
A Mission to Prove His Worth
But despite Jay and Jenna’s efforts, their story was being called into question - and there were rumours he was a cop. At one point Jay, now 62, thought he was about to be killed, but he was offered a second chance. Give up his Solo Angels patch and wear a Hells Angels ‘prospect’ patch - which meant a year long probationary period before he could become a fully-fledged member. “Now I was at their beck and call,” he says. “I had to be where they told me to be and when they told me to be there. There's everything from getting that call to go to Las Vegas to kill Bandidos, to your phone ringing at two o'clock in the morning with a patch member saying, I want a chocolate milkshake. You better respond. You better react. You better perform. Because it's all part of your test. It's all part of your mud check.”
As the secret operation progressed, the deeper Jay got into the Hells Angels’ lifestyle and the more obsessed he became with getting his patch. So he came up with a mission that would prove his worth to the Hells Angels once and for all. He told them that a Mongol was going to start running Mexican methamphetamine up into Phoenix, right into their backyard. And Jay said he would go to Mexico and kill him. His bosses at the ATF were apprehensive - was this going to start an all out gang war? But Jay managed to persuade them that this was their best way to the dark heart of the gang so they agreed. They took a member of their task force, dressed him in a Mongol jacket and took him out to the desert to fake the assassination. A homicide detective used real blood and animal innards from a butcher’s shop to make the shooting look realistic. When Jay showed the footage of the ‘murder’ to the Hells Angels and produced the bloodied Mongol jacket, he was one step closer to being a fully fledged Angel.
The End of Operation Black Biscuit
But while his membership was going up the chain of command for approval, his real bosses in the ATF were getting twitchy. Kerrie Droban explains: “He was having trouble extricating himself from that dual life, he was living it and becoming it. The ATF also had concerns that he was almost at the point of no return. They were losing control of their operative. Then they were gonna have the problem of a biker war. What are you going to do about this? If a Mongol's murdered, surely the Mongols are going to want retribution. What do you do when it's a fake Mongol? How do you pull that off? “
It was decided to pull Jay and Jenna out and raid the homes of the biker gang. Operation Black Biscuit led to the arrest of 36 Hells Angels members and associates, 16 of which were later indicted on charges ranging from murder to racketeering to drug trafficking. But due to the investigation the gang were about to find out that Jay Davis, the gun runner, debt collector and hitman, was actually Jay Dobyns the federal agent. And there was no plan in place to keep him or his family safe.
“The death and violence threats started flooding in,” says Jay. “You are going to run for the rest of your life from the Hells Angels. We know where you live. We know your kids go to school; we know what buses they ride.”
And despite the evidence many of the charges, including racketeering and conspiracy, were dismissed and the remaining Hells Angels negotiated plea deals. “That was very frustrating for me and for my partners,” says Jay. “You commit two years of your life and the blood, sweat and tears to watch it fall apart on the steps of the courthouse. I wanted to leave a legacy and there is no legacy to leave. I wanted to finish with a reputation and respect and dignity and admiration and it wasn’t there. Black Biscuit has been over for 20 years and I’m still trying to get back to my ordinary life.”
Former Hells Angels president George Christie says: “Jay Dobyns certainly came closer than anybody ever has to infiltrate the Hells Angels. And what that does is it creates a level of paranoia that's really indescribable. You start looking at your fellow brother and you start wondering, what's going through this guy's mind? Is he going to turn on me? Is he working with the cops? Is he a cop?” “In the end, we’re nothing more than a speed bump in the history of the Hells Angels,” says Jay Dobyns. “And they ran right over the top of me and kept going. They're bigger, stronger, faster than they ever been. We’re a part of their history, but a small part of their history.”
Secrets of The Hells Angels will premiere on Sky HISTORY on Tuesday 13th August at 22:00
