by Jay Dobyns
Carlos Canino joined ATF’s management team and is running an investigative group for the bureau.
Greg “Sugarbear” Cowan followed in the footsteps of Joe Slatalla, and has become one of ATF’s premier case agents.
Gayland Hammack retired with honors from LVMPD and currently owns and runs a law-enforcement training business.
Rudy Kramer is in the Federal Witness Protection Program, whereabouts unknown.
Billy “Timmy” Long returned to duty and proudly serves with the Phoenix Police Department.
Jenna “JJ” Maguire continues to work on all types of investigations and has developed into one of ATF’s most highly regarded agents.
Pops filed a lawsuit against ATF alleging inadequate compensation and recognition for his work on Black Biscuit. He broke ties with the agency, and his whereabouts are unknown.
Joe “Slats” Slatalla has a mentorship role within ATF, guiding complex investigations and training new case agents. Slatalla is considered the country’s premier expert on electronic and wiretap investigations.
Shawn Wood is considered one of the Southwest’s top experts on gangs, with an emphasis on OMGs.
Hells Angels and Associates
Robert Abraham pled guilty to dealing firearms without a license and was sentenced to twenty-four months’ incarceration with thirty-six months’ supervised release.
Kevin Augustiniak was incarcerated on murder charges and is awaiting trial. He remains a member of the Hells Angels, Mesa charter.
Ralph Hubert “Sonny” Barger maintains active membership with the Cave Creek charter. He is heavily involved in promoting his books and various Hollywood film projects. Sonny is still considered the Godfather of the Hells Angels, and he remains the living icon of biker culture.
Doug Dam pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to eighty-four months’ incarceration. He remains a member of the Hells Angels, charter unknown.
Dennis “Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee” Denbesten pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to seventy months’ incarceration.
Paul Eischeid is a fugitive from murder charges. He has been featured on the America’s Most Wanted television show and placed on the U.S. Marshals’ “15 Most Wanted” list. He remains a member of the Hells Angels, charter unknown.
Tim Holt pled guilty to possession of prohibited weapons and was sentenced to twenty-seven months’ incarceration with thirty-six months’ supervised release.
Rudy Jaime pled guilty to armed narcotics trafficking and was sentenced to five years’ incarceration. He remains a member of the Hells Angels, charter unknown.
Robert “Bad Bob” Johnston pled guilty to misprision of a felony and was sentenced to fourteen months’ probation. After being one of the Hells Angels’ most powerful and respected leaders, Johnston was conveniently blamed by his “brothers” as the lone scapegoat responsible for our infiltration. He was unceremoniously removed from the club.
Craig “Fang” Kelly’s charges were dismissed with prejudice and cannot be refiled. He remains president of the Hells Angels, Tucson charter.
Michael “Mesa Mike” Kramer is in the Federal Witness Protection Program, whereabouts unknown.
Robert “Mac” McKay pled guilty to threats against a federal agent and was sentenced to time served (seventeen months). Now released, McKay is currently living in Tucson, operating his tattoo parlor, and remains a member of the Hells Angels, Tucson charter.
Sean McManama pled guilty to possession of prohibited weapons and was sentenced to twenty-four months’ incarceration with thirty-six months’ supervised release.
Robert “Chico” Mora was convicted of felon in possession of body armor and sentenced to eighteen months’ incarceration. He remains a member of the Hells Angels, Phoenix charter.
Bobby Reinstra’s charges were dismissed with prejudice and cannot be refiled. He is now a member of the Hells Angels Cave Creek charter, and a gang spokesman against the Operation Black Biscuit investigation.
Calvin “Casino Cal” Schaefer pled guilty to armed narcotics trafficking and was sentenced to sixty months’ incarceration. He remains a member of the Hells Angels, Mesa charter.
Donald “Smitty” Smith’s charges were dismissed with prejudice and cannot be refiled. He remains a member of the Hells Angels, Arizona Nomads charter.
Lydia Smith is still married to Smitty and running a beauty shop in Bullhead City.
Teddy Toth pled guilty to tampering with a witness and was sentenced to twelve months’ probation. He is now a member of the Hells Angels, Cave Creek charter.
Scott Varvil pled guilty to possession of prohibited weapons and was sentenced to twenty-four months’ incarceration with thirty-six months’ supervised release.
George “Joby” Walters was a fugitive from justice for over four years. Walters turned himself in to authorities in February 2008, and was sentenced to six months’ incarceration for absconding justice. His RICO and VCAR charges were dismissed. Walters remains a member of the Hells Angels, charter unknown.
Henry “Hank” Watkins’s charges were dismissed with prejudice and cannot be refiled. He left the club in good standing before the conclusion of Operation Black Biscuit.
Family
Dale Dobyns displayed great bravery in the face of personal threats, and remains an inspiration to her father. Dale aspires to work in fashion, art, and design.
Gwen Dobyns is still the “patriarch” of her family. Still married to Jay, she is an active mother and a supportive wife.
Jack Dobyns is still Jay’s “rock,” following in his father’s footsteps as a determined, overachieving, excellence-or-nothing student and athlete.
Jay Dobyns lives a contented and peaceful life devoted to God, family, friends, health, and hobbies. His motorcycle sits parked in a garage, covered with a dusty sheet, never ridden.
From innocence to experience. Who knew an all-American kid would end up being so good at busting gun- and drug-runners.
*
Case agent Joseph "Slats" Slatalla. Always a friend, sometimes a rival, Slats ran our
Hells Angels investigation, code-named Operation Black Biscuit, with an unwavering
hand – even when we butted heads about how to achieve our objectives.
I never got a single tattoo specifically to enhance my undercover work – but they sure did help.
And as the Hells Angels case progressed and I lost myself more and more in the role of
outlaw biker, my love of ink went to the next level.
Rather than endear ourselves to the Hells Angels as freelance had guys, we formed a
legitimate charter of the Solo Angeles, a Mexican motorcycle club, and cosied up to
the Hell's Angels as peers.
Our act was so convincing, it fooled not only our adversaries but also local
law-enforcement agencies ignorant of our operation. In fact, it fooled the
local cops so badly they started investigating us.
Undercover every day. Even the kids who lived near our Phoenix undercover
house got the Jay "Bird" Davis treatment.
Line 'em up!
Mug shots of the principal Hells Angels we investigated
Kevin Augustiniak
Ralph "Sonny" Barger
Dan "Dirty Dan" Danza
Dennis Denbesten
Paul Eischeid
Rudy Jaime
Duane "Crow" Williams
Robert "Bad Bob" Johnston
Robert "Mac" McKay
Robert "Chico" Mora
Robert "Bobby" Reinstra
Donald "Smitty" Smith
Theodore "Teddy" Toth
Geroge "Joby" Walters
Pops (at left) hanging out with the late Daniel "Hoover" Seybert, the Hells Angels heir
apparent to Sonny Barger. Not two months later, Hoover was shot dead in a parking lot.
We flew our Solo Angeles colors at the Florence Prison Run, seamlessly joini
ng
the rumbling horde.
Looks fun, right? Wrong. You try convincing yourself that, at heart, you're still the
good man you think you are, even as you fall deeper into the rabbit hole of a
deception that was increasingly becoming a self-deception.
Finally, I was on my way to becoming a full-patch Hells Angel as a Skull Valley
prospect. The case was coming full circle, and my dark, dangerous biker life
had become all-consuming. I'd become the man I was pretending to be.
Not happy with our prospecting duties, my partners and I became determined
to get our patches as quickly as possible, and at almost any cost. Making
the Hells Angels had become an obsession . . .
. . . an obsession that compelled us to attempt the ultimate push for membership.
The Angels hated rival motorcycle club the Mongols with a passion. How could they
turn their backs on us after we showed them a dead Mongol in a desert ditch.
Author’s Note
No Angel was never intended to be an investigative report, legal brief, or historical document. The best classification for this book would likely be “memoir,” but after having read No Angel, you may wonder, “Is this really the way things went down? How did he recall such detail years later?”
This book was a team effort. I wouldn’t have been able to produce the book you’re holding without the dedication of my writer, Nils Johnson-Shelton. Nils was instrumental in focusing a chaotic and tangled storyline, and he helped grant my words a literary quality they wouldn’t have had if I’d written this book on my own. Without him, my story wouldn’t be the one you’ve just read.
My main concern in writing my story was that it be honest. The survival of an undercover operator often depends on one’s ability to feel one thing yet bluff another while under the scrutiny of a societal element uniquely paranoid of police. The stories of undercover cops are the stuff of movies, and many of us are portrayed as superheroes. Most of us are; I, unfortunately, was not. As we wrote, I constantly reminded Nils, “I’m not interested in being the knight in shining armor. That wasn’t me, and if we tell it that way it’ll be a lie.” If my book was to be believed as the truth, then my depiction of myself also had to be the truth.
The honest and shameful core that runs through this book details my devolution. As I hurtled from Jay Dobyns toward Bird, I became confused, tormented, and afraid. In writing this book, I wanted to admit my mistakes and atone for some of my sins. I wanted to make a book my children could someday read and maybe understand why I’d done the things I had.
As we wrote, our main obligation was to the story’s accuracy, but in the interest of storytelling we did end up taking some liberties. What I consider to be incidental circumstances—things like food, clothing, a background character’s physical description, or the weather—were captured to the best of my memory, but where my memory failed, Nils’s creative and descriptive ability filled the void.
On rare occasions we took the practical liberty of combining events or conversations. The components of these events and conversations were real, but without the reader’s permission to consolidate, this narrative would have filled several volumes.
Dialogue was also sometimes a collaboration of my memory and Nils’s creative ability. We limited the number of epithets I used, and severely decreased the number of times I (sadly) said “Dude.” I didn’t make a habit of listening to taped conversations or reading transcripts as we wrote; instead, I made extensive use of reports that often quoted exact dialogue. I’d lived this story firsthand and then reaffirmed it during trial prep, repeatedly burning its most intimate details into my brain. I know what was said and who said it. This is an important point, because although No Angel attributes damning statements to real people, all of the conversations are true to their spirit if not to their letter—and many are true to their letter. All of the events, persons, and alleged crimes that occur in No Angel actually happened or existed. As I wrote in the epilogue, “The world had enough real bad guys—I didn’t have to go around inventing them.”
It needs to be stressed that in the absence of a trial by jury, all of the crimes detailed in No Angel must remain alleged. However, the evidence and testimony haven’t changed since July 8, 2003. Black Biscuit is as prosecutable—and winnable—now as it was then. But while the crimes alleged in my book remain unproven in a court of law, for me they will always be hard, cold, and provable facts.
Jay Anthony Dobyns, February 2008
Glossary
18 USC section 922(g) (1): This statute states: “It shall be unlawful for any person who has been convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.”
81: Euphemism for the Hells Angels, derived from the eighth letter of the alphabet (H) and the first (A).
AFFA: “Angels Forever, Forever Angels.”
Altamont: The Altamont Raceway in Altamont, California. This was the site of the infamous 1969 Rolling Stones concert at which the Hells Angels got into a fight with and ultimately killed a concert-goer.
angel dust: Phencyclidine, aka “PCP.” Made popular by the Hells Angels in the 1970s, it is sometimes called “Dust of the Angels.”
ape hangers: Motorcycle handlebars with grips above the shoulder.
ASAC: Assistant Special Agent in Charge. See also SAC, below.
associate: Specific to motorcycle clubs, a person friendly to a club; more generally, a partner, usually in crime.
Berdoo: San Bernardino, California, the location of the first Hells Angels charter in 1948; the official “mother charter” of the Hells Angels.
BHC: Bullhead City, Arizona.
Big Four: The world’s four major outlaw motorcycle clubs: Banditos, Hells Angels, Outlaws, and Pagans.
bottom rocker: See rocker.
C-4: Military-type plastic high explosives.
cage: A car, truck, or van; any vehicle that contains a person; so called because driving one is like being in a cage.
center patch: The large patch, stitched on the back of a vest between the top and bottom rockers, that depicts the club’s insignia, which, in the case of the Hells Angels, is the Death Head. See also Death Head, rocker, three-piece patch.
charter: A local or regional division of a club; aka “chapter.”
church: Regularly scheduled charter meetings.
CI: Confidential informant, someone who informs on his or her associates. Often CIs are facing charges of their own and choose to inform in exchange for legal leniency, though sometimes people approach law enforcement to inform of their own free will. See also rat, snitch.
colors: A biker’s vest. See also cut, patch.
confidential informant: See CI.
cut: A biker’s vest. See also colors, patch.
Dago: San Diego, California.
Death Head: The Hells Angels’ winged-skull insignia.
dime bag: A $10 bag of marijuana, usually a little under a gram; aka “dime.”
dime rock: A $10 rock of methamphetamine or cocaine, usually a little under a gram.
eight-ball: An eighth of an ounce of methamphetamine or cocaine; aka “ball.”
Eighty-One: See 81.
flash: The various small patches sewn onto the front and sometimes sides of a biker’s vest. See also tabs.
FTW: “Fuck the world.”
full patch: A member of a club who has received his rockers and center patch. See also patch.
girls, the: Hells Angels’ disrespectful moniker for members of the Mon gols motorcycle club.
HA: Hells Angels.
hangaround: A potential prospect who is “hanging around” a club to determine (a) if the club is interested in having the hangaro
und become a prospect; and (b) if the hangaround is ready to live the biker lifestyle.
hotwash: The act of taking all the information that is “hot” in one’s memory concerning recent suspect interactions and “washing” it out into reports.
ink shop: Tattoo parlor.
MC: “Motorcycle club.” A small “MC” patch is usually found on the back of a vest to the right of and below the center patch. See also flash, tabs.
Meth: Methamphetamine, a highly potent, extremely addictive stimulant. Most commonly snorted or smoked, occasionally injected; aka “crank,” “crystal,” “ice,” “glass,” “speed.”
monkeys: Code name given to the Black Biscuit undercover operators to provide security from monitored police radio traffic, e.g., “Monkey One and Monkey Three are turning onto Main Street.”
mother chapter: The “birthplace” or original location of a motorcycle club.
mud check: A test of fortitude to see if someone can “hold his mud.”
nickel bag: A $5 bag of marijuana, usually a little under half a gram; aka “nick.”
Oaktown: Oakland, California. Unofficial “base of operations” of the Hells Angels, which was presided over by Sonny Barger until he moved to Cave Creek. Referred to by some Hells Angels as “the center of the universe.”
old lady: A female companion, usually a wife or steady girlfriend.
OMG: Outlaw motorcycle gang.
