No Angel

by Jay Dobyns

  I knew in that instant that the case was over. I’d managed to convince the ATF bosses of the value of running as a full patch, but without that status guaranteed, we wouldn’t get the full go-ahead. Our bosses wouldn’t wait for Laconia, let alone nine months. I thought, best case, that we had a month left.

  But we didn’t. In the weeks leading up to the murder ruse, Slats had told our bosses how much continuing the case would cost. They’d flipped out, told him to shut it down. Slats started the process of issuing warrants, which included testifying before a federal grand jury. He got his indictments. The counts included drug trafficking, trafficking in stolen property, RICO conspiracy, and innumerable felons in possession of a firearm. Slats knew the case had a hard-out since early June. He didn’t tell me because he knew that as long as the case was still technically alive, there was nothing he could do to stop me from doing whatever I wanted. Like him, I was just too bullheaded.

  But immediately after the murder ruse I was ignorant of all that. It was pointless, but we hung out at Skull Valley for a while on the thirtieth after we’d been told we’d have to wait for our Death Heads. I didn’t want to give up. I knew that one of these days I’d be hanging out with the guys for the last time, and while I wouldn’t miss the Hells Angels much, I’d miss Timmy and Pops and JJ and the weird life that we’d come to share. It was all I knew. I’d forgotten where I’d come from, and I wasn’t sure I could go back even if I wanted to. I wouldn’t let go of Bird so easily.

  Bobby pulled me aside and told me more about his murder. Joby joined us and said he knew all about Bobby’s work. He said that if Bobby ever went down, then Joby would make public the things that Bobby had done. Bobby said, “Yeah, can’t let that shit out now or I’ll go away for life, you know?”

  After a while we got ready to leave. As I walked out, Bobby told me he had a couple of AK-47s he wanted me to move for him. I told him no problem, I was still Bird, wasn’t I? He smiled, barely.

  I’d never see any of the Skull Valley guys again.

  We randomly hooked up with Duane “Crow” Williams, the old, senile Mesa Angel who used to call me Pruno, on that same day down in Phoenix. We went to his house and didn’t stay for long. He was a nonsensical mess. When I got to the Carroll Street undercover house later that night, I wrote the notes that Slats would ultimately translate into the lines of the last Black Biscuit Report of Incident:

  At approximately 4:00 p.m., the Operatives arrived at the residence of Duane Williams, AKA “Crow,” at. Present at this location was a Dodge pickup truck bearing Arizona handicap license plate.

  During this contact Williams advised the Operatives of, but not limited to, the following:

  That we (HAMC) don’t know who killed Hoover;

  That we think we know who killed Hoover;

  That we should just start killing the people who we think killed Hoover;

  That someone is going to have to die for the murder of Hoover.

  This investigation is continuing.

  THERE WAS A Fourth of July party at Skull Valley that we didn’t show up for. We didn’t bother telling them we wouldn’t be there. We disappeared on July 1. I heard later, from suspect interviews, that our absence was a hot topic. Most thought we’d gotten called on a collection, or had gone to Mexico on business, but they couldn’t be sure. It was very unlike us not to stay in touch.

  Slats had ordered all of us home. He’d gotten us all four weeks off, paid, and he intended for us to use it. It was important that we did, he said. I told him we still had work to do. He said, “No, you don’t. Your families need you much more than I do.” He said it to all of us, but he was looking at me. “All right? We’ve had our differences, and you’ve done a hell of a job. But this phase is over.” I followed his orders. On July 2, I headed home until after the Fourth, at which time I’d go back to Phoenix to help with the bust. Gwen was gone; she’d taken the kids on a driving tour back East. As I’d predicted, I was alone. No safe haven. No Hells Angels. No partners. No family. No peace. I had nothing and I deserved nothing.

  Slats’s closing of the case felt like a complete betrayal. But he knew what he was doing. It’s now my belief that, from beginning to end, Slats served as Black Biscuit’s moral compass—God knows I didn’t—and acted as our collective conscience. It turns out that he really was dealing with the full 100 percent of the case, and I wasn’t. Whatever he may have wanted for selfish reasons, he knew that the case had to end when it did. He was able to make the decision I couldn’t.

  By ending the case, Slats forced us all to return to ourselves before it was too late, before there’d be nothing to return to. He was, more than I or anyone else, looking out for his friend Jay Dobyns, who’d gone missing.

  Black Biscuit’s search warrants were executed on July 8. Staci, Bobby’s girlfriend, called after we started knocking the Angels down and left a frantic message, saying, “Bird, it’s Staci. I don’t know where you are, but wherever it is, stay there. They’re coming for the guys. It looks like they’re coming for all the guys. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on. Hopefully I’ll see you soon …”

  She wouldn’t.

  What was going on was predawn SRT and SWAT raids, conducted in Arizona, Nevada, California, Washington, and Colorado. The total haul was impressive. More than 1,600 pieces of evidence were collected; over 650 guns, eighty of which were machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, and other prohibited weapons; dozens of silencers; explosives, including pipe bombs, napalm, blasting caps, dynamite, and grenades; and over 30,000 rounds of live ammunition. The drug haul, mostly meth or meth-related, was not huge, but it was significant. We also seized over $50,000 in U.S. currency. We served search-and-arrest warrants on fifty defendants, two of whom were death-penalty candidates. Later we’d charge sixteen of them, including Joby, Smitty, Dennis, Bad Bob, Teddy, and Bobby, with RICO conspiracy violations. Paul Eischeid and Kevin Augustiniak would be charged with the murder of Cynthia Garcia. A few more faced parole violations and were looking at immediate time. One of these was Dan Danza, who decided he’d had enough. He couldn’t be a member of a club that he felt no longer lived up to its reputation. He also wanted his teenage boys to have a shot at a better future. He agreed to work with the police. No one else cooperated. The rest awaited trial.

  Owing to lack of evidence, Ralph “Sonny” Barger was left untouched.

  EPILOGUE

  LATE IN THE summer of 2004, JJ and I assisted Slats by listening to surveillance material. The work was tedious and mind-numbing, but I remember one recording from mid-May 2003. I recognized the voices of Bobby, Teddy, and Joby, who were having a general conversation about how great it was to be Hells Angels. But there was a fourth voice I couldn’t place. He was a live wire, and his words hardly made sense. I hit Pause, passed my headphones to JJ, and played the conversation for her. After listening for a minute I hit Stop and asked, “Who the fuck is that asshole?”

  She put her hands in her lap and said, “You don’t know?”

  “No.”

  She smiled slightly and said, “That’s you, Jay.”

  It was a revelation.

  That night I wrote an e-mail to everyone on the task force, apologizing for being Bird. I’d let our mission get the better of me, and I’d mistaken their duty for their support.

  It was at that moment that I started to realize all that I’d wrought. My damage had gone far beyond my co-workers. I knew I’d accomplished what was perceived to be an impossible task—even Sonny Barger boasted that his club would never be infiltrated by law enforcement. But I was naïve. I knew I’d damaged my family, my peers, and my friends, but in the end I thought that, precisely because my task was perceived as impossible, I’d have their ultimate support. I was flat-out wrong. The night I reached the pinnacle—when Joby draped a cut over my shoulders and I refused it—should have been the night that everyone I knew to be on my side would be celebrating. But instead of being there to back me up they were distant and injured, pleading for me to r
eturn to the man I’d once been. I felt like I’d dropped a payload of napalm on them. The night I got what I’d wanted so badly was not a night of celebration. Instead, it was the loneliest night of my life.

  By the summer of 2004 the Hells Angels had issued two death threats against my family and me. Over the following years they would issue three more. The things they claimed to want to do to us weren’t pretty, and they put me on edge. The nightmare of Bobby and Teddy pulling out my tongue recurred often. When the boys came to visit me, there was nothing I could do but wake up, go to the bathroom, and splash water on my face.

  I’d inherited the Hells Angels’ deep paranoia. I perceived threats everywhere. A man sitting in a car that was parked too long on our corner became a biker spy. Animals in our backyard became a Hells Angels hit squad. More than once I jumped out of bed, grabbed my shotgun, and cleared the house and yard in my underwear.

  ATF didn’t take the threats seriously. Feeling unsafe and abandoned by my employer, I moved my family around the West Coast. Running was fruitless. My paranoia grew, and was only made worse by ATF’s refusal to recognize what I knew was a mortal situation. They belittled my concerns and downplayed my accomplishments. I began to engage ATF in a drawn-out battle for compensations—to my bank account, my reputation, and my psyche. It was a dreary business, both heartbreaking and eye-opening. I’d expected to be betrayed by the Hells Angels, but not by the people I’d worked so incredibly hard for.

  Another thing I didn’t expect was for the Black Biscuit case ultimately to fail.

  Sadly, disputes over evidence and tensions between ATF and the U.S. attorneys killed our case. Most of the serious charges were dismissed in early 2006, and as a result, hardly any of the guys who were charged with RICO violations saw the inside of a courtroom. A few, such as Smitty, Joby, and Pete, were still prosecutable for their actions at Laughlin, but aside from the guns and contraband we’d taken off the street, it felt as though most of our work had been for nothing. Sure, we’d sent several guys away for short sentences and forced many into probation, but these accomplishments were nothing compared to the backbreaking case we’d envisioned leveling against the Hells Angels.

  Those were dark days. The press and the defense attorneys, not privy to the turf battles fought between the case agents and the prosecutors, hung the blame on the undercover operation. We were called rogue actors, reckless and impulsive, and the Hells Angels’ legal representation publicly yoked us, confident the case would never go before a jury. Blaming undercovers is the easiest course in these situations. Sometimes it’s the truth, but in our case it was a lie. The worst part for me was that, precisely because neither ATF nor the prosecutors revealed the full truth, I couldn’t defend myself. My real name traveled through the papers as my unlikely story was told, and to some I became a pariah. Black Biscuit’s failure became my own, and thus one of my greatest fears—failure—was realized.

  It was ironic that some of my best undercover work had sealed my fate. My cover was blown and I’d never again be able to work the streets. I was so tired in those days—from fighting with Slats and Gwen, the Hells Angels and ATF—that I didn’t really care about my blown cover, but it had some interesting consequences. My friends and extended family suddenly knew what I’d been doing my whole life, and they wanted to know everything about it. Principally, they wanted to know the answers to two questions: Was it worth it, and would I do it again?

  I’m glad they asked me. I was forced to look in the mirror and assess who I was and what I’d done. Only recently have I been able to offer honest answers. Being an undercover agent had become more than what I did for living—it was what I’d become. This had to change.

  In the beginning I thought of the Black Biscuit case as a classic Good-versus-Evil struggle. I knew the brutality and intimidation brought by the Hells Angels was real. Violence was their way of life. The pursuit of preventing violence was a way of life for some ATF agents like Joe Slatalla and me. Our team of elite investigators was an ideal adversary to the Hells Angels, and everyone on the task force was proud to throw themselves into taking down such an evil organization.

  But as we’ve seen, things aren’t always so cut-and-dried. I went in deep and realized that the Hells Angels weren’t all bad—and I wasn’t all good.

  As I became Bird and abandoned Jay Dobyns, I dived headfirst into a sea of lies. The Angels will point out that all I did was lie to them, and although that is mostly true, I can say with a clear conscience that I didn’t cheat them. I didn’t put guns or drugs in their hands and I didn’t force them to commit or confess crimes. The world had enough real bad guys—I didn’t have to go around inventing them.

  The Angels had a lot to say about me in the aftermath of the case, very little of it good. The odd Angel gave us respect, saying we’d gamed them fair and square, which I believe we had. According to his initial interviews, Joby refused to believe I was a cop unless I sat down with him and said the words myself. Bad Bob Johnston, after receiving a plea-bargained probation, told the press that he didn’t agree with our tactics, but he grudgingly acknowledged that we were very good at what we did. Dan Danza, after turning informant, said he thought we were the real tough guys for doing what we did. He might not have agreed with the law, but he saw the adrenaline-fueled logic in being an undercover cop. I still regard Danza as one of the toughest guys I’ve ever met, and his compliments remain some of the highest I’ve ever received from anybody.

  But mostly the Angels downplayed our successes. They raged that Timmy and I had never become actual Hells Angels. They circled the wagons, protecting the murderers and criminals we exposed. Bobby Reinstra now maintains that in the immediate aftermath of the Mongol murder ruse, he and Teddy became convinced we were cops. I don’t believe him, but I guess hindsight’s always 20/20. In the end, the Angels got it both ways. They claimed the high ground while never relinquishing the low, maintaining their coveted and hard-fought outlaw status while beating the law. They remained misunderstood American rebels while we, who stood and fought for order and decency, were cast as overzealous cops who’d thrown all of our cautions and ethics to the wind. In nearly every respect they won.

  For two solid years the side of my personality known as Bird had developed into my rock and stone. He was the one I could always count on. But by belittling him, the Hells Angels took this accomplishment away from me too.

  As I said, dark days. I turned to the only things I had left: God, friends, and family. I didn’t deserve their allegiance, and why they hadn’t abandoned me I’ll never know. But there they were. I turned to them and saw with new eyes what was good in my life. I realized that only by the grace of God did I have these good things. I came to accept that whatever had been bad in my life was done by my own hand. It wasn’t my job, it wasn’t ATF, and it wasn’t the Hells Angels that had transformed me into the worst version of myself. It was I alone who had done that.

  I don’t know when I realized these things, but when I did, everything changed.

  I remember waking up one day no longer concerned with death or retaliation. If the Hells Angels wanted to do something bad to me, there was little I could do but be ready. If ATF wanted to treat me as an outcast, all I could do was stubbornly refuse. In my life I’d endured a bullet through the chest and countless beat-downs; I’d held ticking time bombs and had dozens of guns pointed at my head; I’d gone undercover with murderers and rapists and larcenists, spending a good portion of my life with society’s most despicable elements. It had been an odd but full life. That day I realized that in spite of its bureaucracy, I loved ATF and its noble mission. I loved my fellow agents for their unacknowledged and selfless sacrifices. I realized that my long life of strange experiences had been genuinely wonderful and satisfying.

  I woke up that day wanting to trade some of my righteousness for a patch of peace. This, too, was a revelation. My sense of determination—some might call it my arrogance—had allowed me to confront challenges that other people simpl
y couldn’t or wouldn’t. I realized that I was proud of the chip I carried on my shoulder. I began to accept myself for who I was. Bird no longer defined me, but he lived inside me; he’ll never again be the main player, but he remains a dear part of who I am.

  I realized the thing that had been most dear to me: the honor and privilege of facing my challenges alongside the most courageous law enforcement officers and family members one could ever imagine or hope for.

  With all my love and respect to those who’ve guided me, encouraged me, accepted me, and stood with me—to call you my friends or family is an understatement. You’re much more.

  You’re my heroes.

  Was it worth it? Would I do it again?

  If I could have looked into the future and known the life I now enjoy …

  ABSOLUTELY, YES.

  Where Are They Now?

  Law Enforcement