#303 Mel Chancey - Youngest President in Hells Angels History

Mel Chancy, welcome to the show. >> Thank you, brother. >> And I'm excited. >> Yeah, I'm excited too.

“>> Man, I can't believe how many mutual friends we have.”

So last week, I started getting text from all my buddies saying, "Oh, I heard you have a Mel on the show. Oh, you got to ask him about all this stuff he's doing. Now he's got a movie coming out. But Blake Cook, Cody Alford, Ray Cash, two lamb, yeah, so many.

>> You baptized Cody, right? >> baptized Cody at our core military event, our appreciation, our military appreciation weekend. And that was the last week in February. >> It was about a year ago, right?

>> No, just this one that passed. >> That was just this one. >> Yeah, just a few months ago, the end of February. And Cody asked me, and he said, "I'm ready." And I said, "You are," said, "Where do you want to do it?"

And back in my partner's Sydney Gordon Spot. He's on this big, you know, dinner coastal in South Carolina. I go, "You want to do it out there?" And he goes, "Yeah." And I said, "You know, they're catching some bullsharks out there."

And there's a lot of stuff out there, right? And he goes, "We'll be good." I go, "He's got a big bathtub upstairs." And he goes, "He goes, "No, bro, I want to do it out there." And I said, "Okay."

So I was mentally prepared, and he asked me the night before, and we were doing it at noon the next day. So I was like pacing around as the first person I ever baptized. He's the first person I ever baptized. You know what I didn't, it wasn't really sure at first,

but you know what the word tells us. When she's ascended to disciples, go out and baptize

“and they name it a father son and a Holy Spirit, right?”

So we're all qualified as believers. So, you know, I wasn't really tripping on a napart. I was tripping out on the, you know, what I see Sydney and the boys catching out of there, right? You know, so it threw me off a little bit shot, right?

But we got it done, and we got some great video of it, and you know, there was a lot of mud out there. We had another dear friend of ours, Cole Hill, that came out there to help me, too, because, you know, Cole is a big kid these days, right?

And I'm dropping him down, and I'm not 300 pounds anymore. So I was like, "Can I get him back up?" And it was amazing. And now he's on the team, and he's on fire for the Lord. It, Cole is really his eyes are open, Sean, and he calls me,

because everybody calls me a big brother. Whether they're older than me or not, they're like, "Well, it's a big brother, 'cause you know, I look out for everybody."

But, yeah, it was amazing.

And so many people that we know, I was like, you know, I was an honor for me to come here and sit with you. - Yeah, that's cool. That's, yeah, I was really happy to see Cole, take that stuff, that was awesome.

- Yeah.

“- I mean, how did that feel to baptize somebody for the first time?”

- It was cool, I mean, I made it through. I didn't start crying until them two dudes did, right? 'Cause I'm like, "All right, I gotta say the words here, "and I gotta be in there, had to be 250 people "on Sidney's Doc, 'cause we're at our military appreciation.

"We can, that we throw once a year. "We have a big outreach for our military, "a core medical foundation. "And we do this for our military. "We raise the $180,000 to donate

"to for our military men and women. "And we teamed up with this company "beyond the barracks and that does build houses "for our veterans and stuff like that. "So we had a full crew there that were watching this

"everybody came out and Sidney's Doc "and I was thinking, "I hope this thing holds, right?

"But we went down in the water and it was amazing."

I didn't, as soon as I started speaking, Cody started shaking, and then Colton started shaking, and I'm like, "I had to hold it together, "her and say these words, right?" (laughing)

And it was just so cool, man. We all hugged, and then you see the videos of me who are running out, it was low tide, Sean, when this was going on. And back there, it was all mucky mud.

And when I watched Colton take a few steps, he took one step, and he went all the way down, and was hip, and he goes, "Yeah, that's not water, Mel, "and I'm like, "Ah, so I'm 57, I'm a little older, "I'm trying to hold on to these guys, right?"

And then you got the videos of me running out. They're like, "Mel, you were running out of there, "I said, "Yeah, I ran faster than when I got "the federal sentence, right?" (laughing)

I said, "I didn't want to need me out there,

"but it was an amazing thing that I was honored

"that he had asked me, we became close, "and through the years he's been talking to me a lot about it, "and he wanted to make sure he was ready." And I said, "Do that, I made sure I was ready "before I got baptized, you know, I was a believer

"for many years before I made my hour." How do you know when you're ready? - I'm just curious, when you're in your mind, when I'm trying to play. - I can't play in. Sean, you know, I grew up in a very strict Catholic home

and my mom, all Italian, my dad, was German and Swedish,

And, but, you know, my mom, my two, I had two older sister, so I was raised

“in that strict women Italian, family's the only boy.”

So, you know, when you're in that kind of family, and Italian, family, and you're the only boy, they spoil you. You have to get spoiled, right? So, it's kind of withdrew me off with all the women later in life, right?

But, I had known the Lord and was an altar boy, and, you know, CCD and Catic has made my communion and everything, so, obviously, I, you know, as we'll get into it, I veered off a different path, and, you know, wasn't fellowshiping with the Lord

through all the Hells Angel years. But, so, when I got, they were equal indictment and ended up sitting in a federal holding facility with no bond, that's when I got down on my knees, and I felt the presence of the Lord.

On my heart, it was heavy, and I just got down, and I said, you know, Lord, I can't do this no more. I'm tired of crashing a car, because this was my second time back to the penitentiary. We'll get into the first time,

but this was my second time, and I said, here I am, I said, I don't know what I'm looking at, 24 years at 85% could have been the outcome. I said, but you know, I said, but now I want to give you the full surrender,

'cause when I came home from prison the first time, I gave him about 70% surrender. I left the motorcycle club. You know, we weren't doing all that craziness. I wasn't selling drugs anymore,

but I couldn't get to give up the womenizing part, and I thought to myself, you know, I'm not that bad of a guy anymore. We're not shooting guys off motorcycles, we're not blowing the city up,

and I'm not selling drugs, but the womenizing thing took another toll, because now I didn't, it wasn't running the club anymore, and I had all this extra time with all these extra women around me,

I was running a big night club in Chicago, right? So, but I waited for, I got baptized in 2019, so I waited years. I just was working on my relationship with the Lord, you know, and we know baptism is only your outward expression,

“for it, it doesn't, that's not what's even you, right?”

And my relationship with the Lord was solid, and I went back home to Chicago, and I had my 41 year friend, Pastor Steve Trollio, who runs the firehouse chapel, his congregation over there,

I had him baptized me and his pool. And where I spent many years, I've known Pastor Steve since I've been 16 years old, he knew me before I joined the motorcycle club when I was poor in concrete.

- Wow, yeah. - Wow. - So that's how far I go back with him, and so I told him, we'd call him true, press a true press that I would love for you to baptize me in your pool or I spent many years.

Even as the hell's angel leader,

I was, you know, they never,

him and his wife and family didn't turn their back on me for that, right? They just continued to pray for me. No, kids, I was going through all that, yeah, yeah. And they went through a lot too,

because, you know, their congregation, they had people in their congregation saying, "Wildly praying for me." We were just watching in a month TV, it's house got raided again.

They blew this building up. They shot these people over here. We were praying for that guy. And he told them, he said, "We're a rescue station here at the firehouse chapel."

One foot from the gates of hell, we're praying for the lost. And some people left the congregation over that, you know, I didn't want no part of that. You know, so he's been, we call him trooper,

he's been in my corner for so long,

and it's just amazing what we get to do

now with each other. And from the John 3 16 devotional team to something from the boxes of hope, we'll get into that we feed the children and it's just amazing to see you.

So, I knew I was ready. You know, when I asked him in 19, and that's when I told Cody the year before, at our military event the year before, Cody, it was asking me.

And then he came up to me later and he goes, "Not sure that I'm going to do it this year."

“And I said, "Cody, that's something that you have to feel here."”

I said, "You already have your relationship with the Lord, and he goes, "Yes, I do." And I said, "Okay, that's what matters." Your outward thing is just, you got this. When you're ready, you'll know the timing.

Right on, came up to me that first day we were there and that night we got there in the town and told me that, and he's like, "Let's do it tomorrow." We went and do it at noon, I said, "Okay." So, I had all the hours of thinking of, you know,

that water. Like I said, I was bored, you know, nervous about the water than doing it, but that was my first one. And then as you can imagine, after seeing that, and everybody in that kit, not on video,

my DMs blew up. Now everybody wants you to baptize me. Yeah, I tell everybody, I'm like, "Listen, if you have a pastor that you're close with, give him the honor." Well, you know what I mean?

I don't want to go baptize anybody just because they say, "Oh, Melchancy baptize us. That's not the right thing."

Yeah, so I always say, "Everybody's qualified,

but if you have a congregation, and you've been tied with your pastor, give him the honor." If you don't have one, then we'll revisit that. And let's talk about that somewhere down the line. And me being in Florida over there,

and I'm on the golf side, right, in the nice water.

And then I married my partner, Sidney. I married Sidney in his wife, Jackie,

“and that was the first, I never did a marriage, right?”

I had to go online and get everything done, Sean, right? And get the Reverend Card and everything like that. So, you know, they got married in Boker, Tony at the courthouse. And we went on a family vacation, and in Mexico, and then I married him on the beach there.

Well, that video got out. So, everybody was like, "No, we want, can you marry us?" And I was like, "I can't do none of this stuff." [laughter] Right on, from the guy who'd ever wanted a job,

and now all this stuff was coming up. But, you know, it's great that I get the fellowship with people about that, you know, the baptism and love of our Lord. Right, love that. Yeah, that's really a quote.

Cody said me that video, like, the day it happened. He did. I was like, the super proud of him. Yeah. And what, like, what of just phenomenal human being? He is a great, I call me young man. He is a great young man, you know?

But let's talk about you now. Yes. All right.

“So, I'm going to give you an introduction here.”

Yeah. Mel Chancy. Catholic altar boy from Chicago expelled from school at age 16, also a father at age 16. The youngest president in Hell's Angels history.

You ran the Chicago chapter over a decade in the outlaw biker world. Frontlines of a six year war with the outlaws, bombing shooting, stabbing. Your clubhouse got hit with what you call the third largest bomb

in US history at the time. Your job and the club show up with the ball pain hammers and do all the beatings. In a TF agent called you in quotes, one of the true believers, the elimination of the enemy

was the mission. Caught a federal reco case, sentenced to nine years, served 30 months, found Jesus in prison, not a jailhouse conversation, a complete transformation. Today, you're a husband, a father, a grandfather,

a born again Christian, and John birth all in the rock are making a movie about your life. Wow. So, and I just trimmed that down about 10 lines.

So, yeah, you know, a never thought I would be wearing

so many hats later in life as I do now. And I mean, I love it. It's a blessing. My grandgirls, 18, or 19, I'm sorry, 19, and soon to be 12, and two grandgirls.

My Kayla and Hayley, my daughter, soon to be 40. She's up in Gallatin, here in Tennessee. Oh, no, kid. Yeah, yeah, she moved down here about two years ago. We're going to go spend a few days up with her.

Before we, after we leave you, and you know, having her so young and then now seeing, you know, with the grandgirls and everything. It's just that's my pride, my wife Melissa's you met. She's, you know, on the other side out there.

And everything that I never wanted, I used to tell the guys in the club like, "You're married. You got the white pick at fence?"

That's just never wanted to do that, right?

I just wanted to be that youngster running around girls and every city I went to, you know, being with the Hell's Angels, I was everywhere, California, New York, all through, you know, the only places I really didn't get to go was out of the country a lot because being who I was at the time,

they weren't trying to let me get in and out of the countries too easy. So I was like, well, that's my call to stay here in the United States. But, you know, travel in the way I traveled and, you know, with the women in the violence, it just kind of took me over. And I didn't ever want that now. I walked my yard and floored

with a white vinyl fence, been married for 16 years. My grand babies are my life, my daughter, and, you know, my partner, the core medical Sydney and just the family that I have now, you know, I was always close with my family, my family was very close. My two older sisters, one was 10 years older than me,

one's 12 years older than me. And, you know, that Italian family, on Sunday,

we were always at my mom and dad's house

for that Italian meal. You know, I might have had a different strip around the back and my bike coming over there. But, you know, the family, they were good to everybody, you know, my family was very close. So I grew up in that close and that family, no one that family.

“That's how I, you know, acted when I was, you know,”

what the hell's angels in that that was my family, you know. But seeing what I'm doing now is I think back and I said, "Only you got because it's everything that I didn't want, a job, any kind of career." They used to laugh back in the day people used to come to my friends and to guys in the club to talk to me and they say,

"We got this business opportunity for Mel," and they'd say, "Is it legal?" And they go, "Yeah, of course, they're like, "He don't want it." So they'd say, "You know, they would tell me you don't want to do it." "Yeah, but he can be a consultant." And they're like, "He ain't going for a man." And fitting in the underworld, he don't want to touch it.

And it's just the way I was, you know, going that life. So, right off, before we get too far under,

So, I got a Patreon account.

It's quite the community. They're the reason I get to sit here with you today. And so they get the opportunity to ask every single guest, a question. Yeah. And the most popular question,

probably 50 people asked it. If you could pick any motorcycle, then the world. What's your favorite? What's your favorite bike?

So, you still ride? No, I don't. I gave it all up. Everything. I haven't been on a bikes and so forth. And say, when I came, the indictment was O4.

I came home in '08. I haven't been on. For me, that reason, as I say, is I can't dip my toe in the pool.

It's like a recovery, an alcoholic, a recovery,

you know, drug addict, or whatever. That was my addiction. The women, the strip clubs, the violence, the motorcycles, you know. And I know a lot of guys that left the club and they still ride. And it's, you know, maybe it's weird in my screw-up mind.

But I just left all of that behind and I just don't. I, you know, have that vision of one day. Maybe I got in a bike and also, I'm like, "Oh, man, I remember that feeling. "And then I'm in a strip club."

And then I'm losing the marriage and losing my partners. And so I don't ride. So I don't know the new motorcycles. But my favorite old school bike that I had. I had the FXRs back in the day.

Then we're running bikes right when we're going, you know, cross-country and you know, out of state and different runs. You know, we had the FXRs. But I had an old school shovel head with eight pangers in a suicide shift on it.

Hard tail, just an old school one. And that was my favorite part of bar bike. Because you could imagine at 300 pounds with the Hell's Angel Patch on and me rolling down the road. It was probably a sight to see, right?

I would imagine. Yeah, so that was my, you know, my, around the hood bike that I loved so much. You know, and I still have all the pictures of them and stuff. But the new bikes, I don't know. So I'm going to go back to the old school for a little bit of a bike.

I would be on. Thank you. And then everybody gets a gift. Thank you. I'm certainly going to bear some gummy bears.

And listen, we have some gifts from you.

“So first off, we have one of the John 3 16 devotional team shirts, right?”

Which just happens this year, Dr. this year, today is the six year birthday for the John 3 16 is it really? Today is our six year birthday. Congratulations. Thank you.

And so I have the shirt for you and the wristband, okay? And I gotta say this because how that got started is my 30, plus year friend Terry Balea, aka Hulk Hogan. But me a book by a lady named Sarah Young and it's called Jesus Colleen. Morning and night.

It's a devotional book, right? And I got a whole stack of them over there. You got them, right? I almost gave you one, but I think you're a little too advanced. Yeah.

Thank you for that. Thank you. And I'm being serious. Yeah, I give them out on the show all the time. Amazing.

Because them devotes, especially her, them devotional is our great. It's a morning and night time. So Terry called me up on a Tuesday night and he said, hey, brother, nice, what's up Terry and he goes, hey, did you read tomorrow morning's devotional? And I go, why would I read tomorrow morning's devotional?

It's not Wednesday morning yet. He goes, why read ahead, you know?

“And he goes, I think that you should read that devotional”

and record it and put it on out on your social media. I said, yeah, why don't you do it? You got millions of followers compared to my couple hundred thousand, you know? And he goes and he'd halt up on me because I want you to do it. He goes, I think this would be great for your following and everything like that.

I said, OK, so I put my phone on a cross I want you to do. Because he used to hold up on me all the time. It was like his little brother. And so I put my phone, leaned it on a coffee can, read the morning devotional. I didn't ever say good morning team.

We didn't have a name. We just as the first one, right? And then I read the passages that are in the bottom of that book out of the Bible. And I said, I hope everybody has a blessed day. I said, I hope everybody feels us.

And that was it, a couple days later, I started looking through my DMs and I have all these DMs from these men and women, these brothers and sisters saying, "Mell, we felt that that spoke directly to us." And it was just the, I was like, wow, what I called Terry up and he goes, "See, I told you, he was just you should do that every day."

So I do it Monday through Friday because I travel a lot on the weekends, whether I'm with my core medical team or I run the bodybuilding industry. The IPB and the NPC. So I'm gone a lot on the weekends. And so I do it Monday through Friday. Finally, the team has to take, we get a name and I pray on it.

“And of course, the John 3/16 devotional team and that's how that started.”

So I told Terry, you know, years later after that, I said, "You created a job for me. I don't have a guy that you know that doesn't like the work."

Right? We were always laughing because you never wanted a job.

And so, and that's how the team started in today's the 6th year birthday. Bad, congratulations. Thank you, bro. We're so cool.

And we have another gift for you. This is an amazing gift that you're going to love.

But this is a gift that I can't touch myself, right? So being my past, I can't touch it. So my partner, Sidney Gordon, who is the CEO of Core Medical,

“he is going to come out and give you this gift. And I think you're really going to enjoy this show.”

Oh shit. 8 night, I really close friends from Suns and EOTEC. Hope this up, hooks worth a break on there. We can get the special for you. But this is New Mark 1 from Suns. Holy shit. Dude, how cool is that, bro? That is awesome. And obviously, I don't know much about them. But Sidney is a gun advocate and is the smartest person I know or with the gun.

But I see around, you know, and he said, this would be a great gift for Sean. And we put the John 316 devotional team on there, the Sean Ryan podcast, and Core Medical. Yeah, this is awesome. It's a cool one, huh? Thank you. You're welcome, brother. Smooth. Yeah. Smooth. Yeah, that's cool looking. And, you know, and as you know,

“with me not being able to, as I say, touch them, look at them with my background. I surround myself”

by people that can carry, right? Is you? Yeah, all of our friends, my wife. You know, really? Yeah. Yeah, I surround myself by people like that. So, you know, thank you. You're welcome. This is awesome. Yeah, we thought you didn't enjoy that. So, break that out after the interview. Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure. Man, you ready? I'm ready. All right. It's going to be a heavy one. I know.

All right, Mel. Where'd you grow up? So, I was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago in a town called Elsa, which is about 20 minutes out of the actual city. Born and raised there, strict upbringing. As I told you, I was an altered boy, catechism. We lived 10 steps from the church. I would walk up my back gate. Well, take a ride in walk, 10, 15 steps, and we're at the church. So, I grew up in that. My mom and dad were very strict Catholics. My dad was a hardworking man. Raisin, you know,

myself and my two sisters. So, my mother was that home. Are you the oldest? I'm the youngest. I'm the youngest. My oldest sister, Carol is 12 years older than me. And my sister, Jackie, was 10 years older than me. And she passed a body year. So, go, she had a mess real bad. Sorry, I don't know that. Thank you. So, she passed. So, I was raised by my sisters and my mom. You know, my dad was home. My dad was the my baseball coach growing up. I played baseball. My life every

every time I went to a new league. My dad became the coach. So, my dad was Coach Mel. I was named after him. You know, so my dad was Coach Mel. My mom ran the concession stands. And gave the communion out from church to the people that couldn't come to church and get communion. You know that were older people and couldn't make it to church. So, our family was real pillars of the community. You know, I was a little melvin running around to everybody in the neighborhood,

you know, and grew up. I'm still friends with all the kids I grew up with. The guys and girls

that I grew up with. I never even even threw all of them motorcycle years. I've remained friends

with the whole them kids. No kidding. Yeah. Yeah, the girls I played true through dare with. And you know what I mean? I'm just kissing them under my mom's pool and stuff like that. I'm still friends with them to this day. Most gear looks good until you actually start using it. Then you find out pretty quickly.

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It's amazing. So I grew up grew up in the suburbs like that. And I grew up a he-man fan,

“Sean. I was I was big into he-man. Remember that character? Oh yeah, our tune.”

And when I was young, I was watching he-man. And I wanted to, I want to look like that one day. And I started flipping through the body building magazines at like 14 years old. My mom and dad bought me some weights. And if you remember, it was like, go before your time. The weights used to have the sand in them, concrete sand. I remember the plastic weights. They bought me a bench set for the basement. And I started, you know,

working out, watching, you know, no internet flipping the magazine squat and an bench press and and curling and everything. And then so you're at a body building at a very young age.

Yeah, started at like 13, 14 when I was in the house doing that. And then when I was 16,

there was a gym right across the baseball fields from my house. Literally, a two minute walk. And it was an old barn. And it was called Jay's body shop in the guy lived with his mom and dad at the house. He made this old barn an old school gym. I mean, it had sore cover caps for weights and the old plastic weights like that, you know, pulleys through the barn for back and stuff like that. And I went and signed up for the gym. It was $5 a month. You got to keep going any time, right?

And it was in that gym that I met two bikers. And at the time, Sean, I didn't know, I mean, they were all tatted up. I didn't know that they were a part of this club called the Hell's

“Henchman that we know we merged with the Hell's Angels. But I didn't know that's what they were”

a part of. I always thought it was kind of weird that they trained in jeans because I always

say, you know, bikers never really trained legs back at the day, right? But I did because I wanted to be big everywhere. I wanted to be that body building big, just big, like he managed, stuff like that. So I met them to them to older, they were 10 and 12 years older than me. How old are you at the start? I was 16, 16, freshly kicked out of high school. What did you get kicked out of high school or night, sack the principal? You socked the principal. So

me and another friend got into a fight in school with another group of guys from another town. They were busing them into our school from this other town. And they were harassing some girls, you know, because they weren't from our school. Their school shut down for the year. So they were bringing them by us. And they were harassing some girls. So me and one of the friends I grew up with,

“we got in a fight with these guys. So we were getting kicked out of school. And when I came into the”

office, my mom was already there. They'd called my mom up. She came down for foot three Italian lady. You know, and, you know, I was more afraid of her in that room than the principal, of course, right? Because now I'm getting kicked out and I know she's mad. And when we were in the office, the principal said, was kind of speaking disrespectful to my mom. Like, this is what happens when, you know, parents don't know how to raise their kids. And I came from such a, you know,

of strict family. My mom and dad were the best raising me, right? It was just me being me. And I just jumped over to Ed Desk and socked them and ran out of there. Because I knew that the cops are probably coming right on at 16. Ran through the neighborhoods took me like, you know, an hour to get home. You know, I'm out of a 10, 12 minute drive to school. Took me an hour to get home. I'm running through the neighborhoods. And when I came through the back fence of my house,

like sneaking in, my mom was sitting there with the town police because the town we grew up in Elsa. My mom was a crossing guard. She later, you know, worked at the bank ran the concessions dance, so they knew her. They were like, hey, Carol, we got to. So they were at her waiting for me. You know, didn't, didn't, didn't arrest me, but I got expelled from that school. So my mom said to me, you're, I'm going to have to take you 40 minutes away. Now you got to go to

this new district. And I said, I'm, I'm done with the schooling thing. Mom, I don't want to do it no more. So she signed me out, actually, because, you know, I was 16 years old. She signed me out. So in the house I grew up and we had a big pool in the yard. So I'm like, this is great. Now, I don't have to go to school. I'm just going to lounge in the pool all day. Cops, I'm raised, get a tan, hang out with the chicks in the neighborhood. And, uh, wasn't too long after that.

My mom came home with some construction boots. And I go, what's that for? And she goes, you're, you're going to work. I go for, for what? She goes, you're going to go work with your uncle, poor and concrete. Oh, you're not lounging around the house all day. You don't want to go to school.

And back then, I mean, I was born in 69. I'm not great at math, but, you know,

“somewhere in the young, you know, the 80s somewhere in there was 69, 789, I'm 20. So,”

yeah, mid-80s, um, I started, I was making $9.00 an hour, poor and concrete. So I was able to buy my first Irak as E 28, about a Z-20, and I bought my first Harley, because I liked bikes. I grew up with third bikes. So I bought my first Harley. So then when I seen them with the fellas in the gym,

the two guys I'm telling you about, you know, they ride their bikes there, but they never had their

patch on. They just came in, cut off shirts and stuff like that. And they took me under their wings, shun, and I, and not to groom me, because I didn't know who they were, but they were like, hey, kid, you're doing this wrong. And keep your back up like this. Do these dead lifts like that. They just were two good solid guys to me that I really enjoyed and liked, you know. And it wasn't till about a year or so later that the girl that I have my daughter with, she lived in a town next to

else, called Crestwood. It was attached. And I was over at her house, you know, visit in her. It was before I had my daughter, right before I had my daughter. And I've seen one of the guys named John, and he come pulling down the street. I hear his bike and he comes and he makes a turn and he waves.

And I'm like, how did he know I was sitting? He was waving to me. Well, he pulled in two doors down.

It was, it was Jenny's neighbor. The girl that I have my child with, his name is Jenny. It was her neighbor. And I go, wait a minute, you know, John, and she's like, yeah, that's his family's house. He grew up with us. Why? And I go, because he, he trains at this gym, and I train at, and I know him from him that are super cool. So he come walking down. And he goes, what are you doing? You dating little Jenny? And I go, yeah, I'm dating Jenny. She was a couple of years older than me. So that's when I

found out that, you know, he was part of this motorcycle club that called the Hell's Henshman. Wow. Yeah. So then I was wide open now. My eyes were like, because he, I kind of liked the way he looked. He was all jacked up and tatted up and everything like that. And that started my journey with the

“tattoos. And I kind of looked up to, to John. Do you remember your first tattoo? Yeah, it's under here.”

What is it? It was a tiger. A tiger? It was a tiger, bro. I got it obviously. I wasn't, you know, it's 16. I was built a little bit because I was already trained in for a few years. I was on the notch now. I haven't, I didn't touch any hormone yet until I was 19. So I got a tiger that, you know, was, you know, big on my arm at the time, but later was like a like you let that big, you know.

So, you know, I ended up covering that up through the years and stuff like that. But that was my first

tattoo. And then I just kept going from there because, you know, these guys were all tatted up and in the right and stuff like that. So before we get too far into the bike or stuff, yeah. You had a child at 16. Yeah, just turned in 17. A few months before my 17th birthday. So yes, and later later on in 16, in a very strict Catholic family. Yes, yes. And her family was, was very close in tight with each other too. So it didn't really go over good on other side.

Yeah, with her dad, it wasn't, it wasn't the happiest, but here we were, right? And, and, and, and I told him, I said, listen, I'm, I have a job. I work. I'm going to take care of my, you know, my child. I'm going to take care of, you know, your daughter and, you know, we're going to be together.

“And that's, that's how I started. And I, you know, I poured concrete every day and came home to her.”

And, you know, she, she had a job. She worked at this big food grocery store that we had in our neighborhood. She was in the butcher's union. If she was, I was 16. She was just turning 19. Two and a half three years older than me. So, we started that journey together. We got married when I was 20. We got married. And, and that only lasted a year because now at, at the age of 20, I was already with the club. I was already with the club. And she knew the lifestyle from her neighbor and stuff like that.

And didn't really want to have any part of that. And I, you know, and I didn't really want to have her have any part of that. So, so young, young with the, with the child, which is crazy now because, you know, she's like my mom these days because my mom passed in 2019 at 90 years old, Sean. 90 years old, strong believer, Rosary Beads in her hand every time I would leave the house. Her come, come over and visit on the motorcycle. My mom loved all the fellows.

The fellows personally, but when we would, she would see us put them jackets on and stuff like that. She'd be like, oh, she just, she just knew that it was, you know, that was the problem there. That was this mischief, you know, but all the fellows would come over and see my mom at the house. And she'd have the Italian dinners and lunches and stuff like that. You know, my house was the stomping grounds for a lot of the guys, you know. So, um, yeah. So, you know, what, what is it?

Man, I'm trying to think that's a good one. I remember she was late, obviously.

“She was late on her period and we took the test and she said, I'm pregnant and I said, okay.”

It wasn't, it didn't shock me like that. I said, okay. Like, yeah, let's not fear. No, huh? I sure we're going to have a baby. Then in back then, we didn't know, you know, we didn't do the testing of paternity test or, you know, to see what the baby was going to be. We didn't know. We didn't know what we're having. So, you know, we had our little girl named her Daniel. And, um, and just, uh, we're raising her together through the mirrors, you know. And I say this,

uh, was less because Jenny came from a good family. I came from a good family. So, when I exit it,

my daughter Daniel was in good hands. She was raised, you know, from her mother, Jenny first and

foremost, but then from my family and her family, right? So, she was good there, you know. And then financially, I was okay to take care of her because now I was already in the club and run in the gamut of what we're going to get into. And the way I was living. So, I was making money. I didn't have to go to work anymore. So, financially, I was there for my daughter. But, you know, I wasn't walking her down the school dances and stuff like that because I was

already deep into what we're talking about. So, yeah. So, I didn't even dawn on me a second thought to, you know, do any abortion or anything like that. I said, we're having the baby together. And, you know, we're going to raise this baby together. Wow. Not even any fear after, like, during the birth, not a hesitation. No, Sean. I was just, I was kind of stoked, you know. Like, I didn't, I didn't, nothing I planned for, obviously, right, but when it was there and in front of me,

“I think that's kind of how I looked at life with everything. You know, I was one of them guys the”

well. I'm here and I'm, I have to adapt. You know, like, I always say about prison or like,

how'd you do it? I'm like, well, there was no playbook. How to go there. Nobody gave me the rules and the playbook of how to do prison time or how to do club stuff. But, uh, I was in a situation and I was able to adapt to that situation. You know, makes sense. Yeah. So, let's get into, I got in the club. I know we kind of started. Yeah. A little bit. So, guys that, that the gym, met them guys at the gym. Yep. And, um, I think now I'm probably 18 years old and they invited me

down to one of their parties at the clubhouse. And I went down. When did you start writing? Uh, when I was 16. You started writing up my first Harley. When I was 16, dirt bikes and stuff and then I got the first Harley when I was 16. So, I went down there, um, seen one of their parties,

hung out and seen, you know, all the different people out there and stuff and just had a good

time. Nobody was grooming me for nothing. Nobody, you're, you're, you're supposed to be 21 to get in the club. What was going on at the party? Uh, live bands, you know, full bar, you know, strippers on the pole, the party was open to the public, right? So, it was just, you know, just the big, just the big party, right? I got to meet the fellows and everything like that. And then, um, they all hung out at a bar that wasn't too far from where I grew up in my, in my

neighborhood about five minutes. So, you know, at 18 now, I had full facial hair. Now, I was already getting jacked up and training, the, the weights were kicking in and stuff. I was bigger. I wasn't getting carded. Everybody thought I was 21 or better. You know, nobody was carding me because I had that looked to me. I had tattoos on me and stuff. I didn't look like an 18 year old youngster at that time, you know, um, and then I went back down to their clubhouse, you know, for they were

getting together. They were having a run. I went down there for the run. Really got to meet the, the fellows in depth, you know, the guy that was the president for the henchmen and all the, all the, all the, all the, the crew that was part of them. And, uh, I just got along with them very good, you know, and, uh, and then I remember the, the president asking me, he's like, you want to come around the

“club, huh? And I said it as an injury. And I said, I do. I do. I said, I think this is a cool thing,”

which you guys got going on here and stuff. And, um, you know, the guy that's on my arm right here, who's tombstone, we lost L, um, he kind of became, like, my sponsor that was looking out for me, right? The guy that was going to look out for me. And, um, I remember him telling me, we're going down to a meeting and he said, listen, he goes, you know, you got to be 21 to be in the club. And I said, yeah, and he goes, you know, you're 18. Now, to get ready to turn 19,

he goes, you look older. He goes, so you're 21, right? And I go, yeah, okay. Right? Right? I go, okay, yeah. And then when we got in that room, and they called me in to where they were having the meeting, and one of the fellows said, hey, how old are you? I just looked around that room, man. And I just got this like pit in my stomach. And I'm like, I'm almost ready. I'm, I'm almost turning 19. And then they looked at L, and he goes, I said, oh, it's not his fault.

And they said, okay, well, he can't come into the club into your 21. Like we have a role, right?

But you can be our friend. I said, I would love that to keep hanging around with you guys and seeing you guys out and stuff like that. So I concentrated on working, you know, porn concrete. I loved porn concrete. The boss I had, me and him became very close as names Merrill Haley. And we, I became like a little brother to him. He was 10 years older than me. And he taught me that concrete game. And I loved porn concrete. It was physical. You know, I would pour concrete all

day. I would go train as soon as I was done. And then I go home and, you know, shower off and go to bed and kick back up and do the same thing. So not only was I built in my body, what the weights, I was outhumping forms and pouring dry ways and foundations and stuff. So it was great exercise

“for me all the way around and making great money back then. You know, so, and that's how I was”

able to forge, you know, the car and the bike and everything like that. So now I go back to a party.

And I'm, right, just get ready to turn 20 here in 20 years old and the one guy asked me, go, how old you know, Mel and I go, I just see you last year, right? I'm 20. And I remember him saying, he goes, man, you're going to age terrible. He goes, you look like you're 30. You know, I had to go tea and I had it long, Sean. I had it like this and it was to a point. Kind of like the wrestler, Jim, the animal, night heart because I was a wrestling fan,

grown up a wrestling fan too, you know, and I had a point to like that. And they said, man, you're down here, you come to the parties, you come and hang out. They said, all right, listen, you can be 21 here, soon. Let's, let's make it official. You want to become an official hangar on and I said, I do. So I became an official hangar on. So when the nights they had their meetings, I would be down at the clubhouse outside, not not previous to the meetings, I'd be outside, you know, cleaning up the

clubhouse, making sure, doing the duties and stuff like that, you know. And I was only hanging around for a couple months and they've seen that, you know, my head wasn't to this here, you know,

“and then I became an official prospect and, you know, and at the time, what is it hanging around me?”

And what is the definition of that? So the hangar around is you come around, you come to the parties, you come to the meetings, you know, you're not in the meetings, but you get to know the guys, you're there, you know, you're kind of doing any kind of work, you know, I was outside watching the bikes, why they were inside at the meetings. When we used to go to the bars, I would, you know, if the member went to the bathroom, I'd stand outside the bathroom, making sure he was okay,

and there I know what he was just going to get him when he was vulnerable. The same thing is a prospect, you know, it's just not officially a prospect, you do a hangar on status, you know. And that could last. And then Dr. Nation period. Yes. And that could last up until they have to vote on it. You know, I see you become a prospect, you become a prospect. So is it a known, is it known, you're going to become a prospect that you're going to hang around? Yeah, you become the hangar

around, and it's your goal to become a prospect, then to become a member. In that that period could take, you know, I've seen it take years with guys. I've seen it take years, you know, with me, I was a hangar around a few months, then I was a prospect. And at the time, the club, the Hell's Henshman and Chicago, they were having a little squirmish with another motorcycle club by the name of the DC Eagles at our club in Chicago. And it was just the, I say the school yard stuff.

The senior children, bars, fighting, you know, no shootings and no bombings and nothing, what became later, right? It was just just a little bit different to that stuff. And as a prospect and being young, I was out and wanting to be a part of that. So I, you know,

“I remember being out until four or five o'clock in the morning with the fellows going home,”

making my lunch for the day and getting on my job site at 6.37 in the morning. But at 20 years old, you know, you're full of it. So you can do all that, right? And, um, you know, and now I'm, I learned what testosterone was at 19 from, from some of the fellows in the gym. And I started taking some testosterone in a few antibiotics, the decas, and stuff like that. And I grew. My dad was a bigger frame guy, not from bodybuilding, just a bigger frame guy.

I always had a good appetite. I was pouring concrete. I was, you know, I was physically just growing.

So now, you know, I'm five, been five, ten since I've been like 16 and five, ten. I started out, you know, by the time I was 18, I was probably 180 pounds with abs. I looked like a, like a surfer kid, you know, and then I just started growing to testosterone in the antibiotics. And the way I could eat in the way they showed me the train. You know, by the time I was 24 years old, I was 275 pounds. Just, you've seen the old pitchers just the mass of, you know,

but that bodybuilding was my love. I love to train. I love to go pour the concrete, you know. So now as I'm prospecting and getting through all that and, you know, what, what, hold on, what was it about, what drew you to them? I mean, I got a couple of questions. Yeah.

strict Catholic family. Yeah. I grew up Catholic. I know that's all about how did you,

that brother, what did your dad do? My dad ran a big company. It was called Carson Perry Scott's. Remember the stores, Carson's back in the day. He ran the warehouse division of this. So my dad was a hard worker. He was a four-minute boss of all this, this big warehouse. You know, my baseball coach just worked work. My dad was a very, very hard worker

“provider. So yeah, I'd seen that. And that's, I think, where I adopted that when I got into the”

concrete. I was a very hard worker. I was doing side jobs with my boss, Merrill. After working all day and, you know, extra money doing side jobs. I was just a hustler with that. I think what drew me to the club is when I seen that. I seen these guys now. It's, you know,

in 1989, I'm 20. And I seen the brotherhood, the camaraderie, the riding a motorcycle, going to

parties, walking in the bars, you know, seeing how people react. But I seen that tight brotherhood that these guys had, that this henchman club had with each other. And I, and I enjoyed that. And they took me in and I was, you know, I was like, they're a little brother, you know, and they showed me the ways. And I don't mean just the violent ways. I mean the ways of life, you know, your, your brother's keeper, you know, your brother's important to you, you know,

you're, you've got your brothers back all the time, right? I mean, I just, they showed me that side of life that I didn't see growing up. You know, you know, the family was family, but now I got to see it would have bunch of guys that really loved one another and hung tight with one another, no matter what happened. One of the guys got, you know, one of the guys got jumped by that by that DC club. And the next night they were out return in the favor. So I got to watch that, you know,

as the prospect and see it and then to be part of it. And, you know, I was big and strong and they love having me around because I wanted to run and do all that first. I just seen it and got addicted to that because the side of life I didn't know. I didn't see any violence growing up. So you didn't, you didn't, you weren't getting in fights and shit all the time at school. No, not, I mean, that one incident I did and then what happened, but I didn't grow up in that kind of family

where my dad was so passive, so passive, my mom ran the household, you know. And there was no violence

in the household that that at all. My dad and mom never re-elined at each other. They never were

screaming at us. We just had a very, you know, close loving family. So then when I got to see that and I was, you know, get to be part of that and rolling in with a crew of dudes and, you know, beating up this other club and stuff, I just, I just wrapped me into it and I seen it and I liked it. And, uh, how we say, I got bit by that violence and, you know, running around with the patch on and the women I see and stuff like that. So, and then right as I was right before I was turned in 21,

I became member. They made me a member. I think I prospected for just a little under a year. How did they, how did, before we go there, I mean, so they asked you if you wanted to be a hang around.

“Mm-hmm. What, what, what is it that you have to do as a hang around to turn into a prospect?”

Um, be available, you know, be at the, be, be on call with them guys are calling you up. Hey, we're, you, we'll see you. We're having our meeting next Thursday. We'll be down here at, you know, 737 o'clock, be down here, you know, be in scene, getting to know the members through the week. Guys would call me up and say, hey, we're going out tonight. But you jump on the bike and meet us at the alpine. Okay. I'll meet you at the alpine. You know, keep me out. You got a job right

yeah, I go to work with time. You go to work. Yeah. 637. All right. We'll have you home by five. One of them things, you know, just, I just outrun around, getting to know the fellows deeply, you know. Um, you know, a lot of them fellows grew up on the south side of the city. That guy John was, you know, grew up two doors down from, from, you know, Jenny. So a lot of them guys were on the south side of the city. A good handful. I'm probably a dozen of them were on the south suburbs.

So I'd get to know them. They'd call me up. Hey, we're going to lunch once you come meet us for lunch. And I'd meet them for lunch and stuff like that. So they got to know me pretty fast in that, in that hangar-round period to where they were like, hey, you know, we're going to make you a prospect. We're ready. We think you got what it takes to, to be a prospect. You know, now the work starts. You know, now you've got to be on a back-and-call, you know, if some members call in yet two in a morning and say, hey,

I need you to come down or my bike broke, go get the breakdown truck. You know, I couldn't tell them, I got to get up in three hours, then they didn't want to hear that. You better be there. And I was Johnny on the spot. I was there. I just, as I was for work and just as I was for everything else,

“I was like this coming into that club. What's Jenny think about all this?”

Yeah, and that's where that story starts. So she was not into that and she did not want to have any part of that lifestyle with raising a, you know, a one-and-two-year-old daughter and, you know,

womenizing. You know, there's a lot of women that come around the motorcycle clubs, right? You know,

“you're, you're almost like the rock stars of the, that community, right? And a lot of women”

around the clubs and stuff. And she's seen that from, from what John used to do and stuff in the fellows. So she wasn't for that. And then when I seen that I was getting deeper into it, you know, and probably going to become a member. That's when I sat down with her and said, you know, maybe the same right for us anymore to do. And she said, well, I'm not willing to throw it away. Let's see how it goes. Well, then not too long after that. She put a tape recorder. I don't

mean, I mean, I've shot a big tape record. Now they got them like this big, right? I mean, a big old tape recorder with the cassette in it. She hit it under our bed in the house and

recorded my phone conversation. Oh, and I was on the phone with a girl. Oh, she running around with

the, with the girl at the time, you know, so she heard that tape presented it to me. And she goes, this is exactly what I knew. What was going to happen, right? And I said, I couldn't deny it. I was right in front of it. And I said, okay, so maybe it's best stuff that we, you know, part up, raise our daughter together. You got that great family. I got the great family and, uh, little Danielle's going to be okay. And let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, you know, do this. So we,

we got divorced. We were married. We got divorced, you know, I think it was about a year. And, uh, and then that's, that's where the journey went with her, you know, what about your parents? Yeah, my parents were, they did not like what was going on, right? Because they've seen me prioritizing the club, you know, I did come home and see the family. And I, you know, I was visiting back to my mom's house and stuff. I didn't live there obviously no more had my own place. But they were,

“you know, I think concerned, you know, I remember my dad's and down with me and saying,”

son, you know, I'm never going to tell you what to do. He said, but, you know, I hate to see

end up in the penitentiary or, you know, getting something happening to you out late at night, you know, they knew I was out running around late at night. But I still had it together because I wasn't a member yet and I was still working my job. So they've seen me still, you know, going to work, I'm still taking care of my daughter, you know, financially, seeing her and everything like that, you know. It wasn't until I finally, you know, made member. And, you know, when you make a member,

it's got to be 100% of the vote. So everybody in that room, and I believe at the time there was about had to be about 28-30 guys that were in that health management chapter in Chicago, 100% at the vote for you. If one says no, then you don't get your patch that time. You still remain a prospect. The member has to tell you why he said no to you, what you did he didn't like or what, you know, what was going on. And then you fixed things from there and that, you know,

your sponsor would bring you up at another appropriate time. Maybe it'd be a month down the road, three weeks down the road, they'd bring you up for your, you know, to be full member. Again, they'd vote on it. And then I got the 100% vote. Yeah. And I was just turning, I was 20 turning 21. You're in there when they vote. And you're outside. You're outside. They call you in the room. What do they say? Would you get in the call you in the room? Well, they kind of, they played a

like a little to trick at me. So I got in there. I was at my best time. And when you, when you're prospect, you just have the bottom rocker are said, Illinois. And on the front, we had a tag that said prospect, right? You didn't have the hell's henchmen in the, in the center patch. Just the bottom. So I came in the room, looking around the room. They said, hey, they, they want you in the room when the guys came down. So they want you in their mail. They called me

road. They gave me the nickname of road because one of the old henchmen, when he met me, I had a pushes bike to get started. His battery died. So I, and he was here. We're going to push the bike and he was standing next to it. And I said, just jump on it. I'll push it. Don't worry about it. I got to just jump on the bike, you know, pop it in gear, right? So he'd like looked at me and he said, okay, so the bike started. He came over and he goes, what's your name again?

And I said, Mel, and he goes, there's a short from Melvin. And I go, yeah, and he goes, kind of name is that. And I go, oh my dad, and they named me after my dad. He goes, uh, he goes, you look like that dude, man, that road warrior dude. He goes, wait, wasn't, wasn't his name, Mel Gibson. And I go, yeah, crazy, right? And I go, yeah, Mel Gibson, the road warrior. He goes, you look like

“that dude, because I'm not calling you Melvin, I'm calling your road. And that's how that name stuck.”

Those, yeah, everybody called me road from that day on. That was my nickname through the whole decade of the clubs, you know, road. So, um, they call me in the room. I'm in the room. And now one of the members says, hey, man, you know, when we brought you up for your, for membership tonight for your patch, we don't think it's going to happen here. You know, so why don't you take that vest off? Leave it here. Nice knowing you sending it down the road. And I said, yeah,

I'm, I'm here all the time. I start pleading my case. I go, I'm here all the time. I'm going out.

We're in the middle of this fight with this other club, you know, I'm there. I said, I don't understand why you guys would, would say that, you know, send me down the road. And the president said, take that vest off. And I'm looking at all these guys with these straight faces. And I'm young. And I'm like, who, man? All right. And I took the vest off. And they said the reason why is because you're putting this on. And they held up the, the top rocker and the center. We call it the spook. It was a, it was a

skull head with a, with the, you know, the hood over it, right? And they held up the spook in the top rocker. And they said, you're a member. And I was like, oh, man. And they all hugged me and stuff. And of course, we got annihilated that night. Partied for a few days. I wouldn't got my, you know, my, my health's henchmen tattooed on me and stuff like that. I got to cover it up now. But I got the henchmen tattooed

on me. And then I was officially in the club, to our resolve, you know, above that felt it was, it was amazing.

Because you know, it was something that I did look up to. I did look up to them guys, man. And I loved them guys. And I loved being around them and in that camaraderie in the brotherhood, you know. And that started the journey there. And it wasn't too long. And it was probably like a year shown here later. Um, they made me to sergeant of arms. Hold on. Before we get into that,

“can you just give me a breakdown of a motorcycle, a chapter? What, what is, what, what is the structure?”

What's the chain of command? Yeah. What are all the jobs? How big is it? Yeah. President, vice president, um, sergeant of arms, the enforcer for the club, you know, inside the club, and outside the club, you know, doing, doing force or if you got a handle business inside with the fellows. And of course, you know, in the outside, you're the sergeant of arms and force or slashed enforcer, um, secretary, treasurer, road captains, the road captains jobs are to make sure

your bikes in running order, your tires are not flat in the ball, then everything like that. And where we were going to go on the runs, they structured the runs, no GPS back in the day. So mapping it out. So everybody had a, had a job to do in that structure. You know, very military. You know, and I knew that military side, only because as we talked earlier, I came from a huge military family. My dad forged his brother's birth certificate when he was 16 Sean and got

in the Korean War. Wow, 16. Then he ran a platoon by the time he was 18, because he didn't have a great home life. His dad was a pretty rough guy with them. So he wanted to get away. So he was in the Korean War. My uncles were in Vietnam. All my boy cousins were in Afghanistan and desert storm. You know, I was the only boy out of the family that didn't join the military. I went in the motorcycle world, right? So, um, I knew that military structure. And I seen it here now.

You know, when we route, everybody had a job to do when we were in the public, especially when we were in bars with other motorcycle clubs. A lot of clubs were in the city of Chicago. The outlaws, these DC Eagles, you know, five, six prominent clubs. So we'd be out and they'd be in the same bars as we were. And we, everything with us was security to make sure we were all safe and

case, something jumped off. Always had a gun on me. Always had a ball peen hammer in my back pocket.

A knife attached to my belt. We're some sap clubs. Remember the old, I had some deer skin clubs and we brought them to the tailor and the shoe leather guy. And he put the, the lead pellets in there. So I had the sap gloves on all the time and just, you know, constantly ready just to make sure

“that our brothers were all good when we were out and about. Because in that world, you have to be seen.”

You know, you can't have a, you're going to be some prominent motorcycle club and you guys never leave the clubhouse. That world who's out and about and running around and, you know, to dominate ones, you know. So that structure to me that I seen with them was, you know, something that I really, really enjoyed and, and like to see, you know, when they made me the sergeant of arms that was a real big honor for me at that young age, you know, 21 years old and

up, you know, now I'm probably 225 pounds and them guys love that I trained. I didn't do any drugs or I drank a little bit here and there, but I wasn't, you know, I've definitely been drunk when I got my patch and had some nights of Jack Daniels and stuff, but I wasn't drinking a lot because I bodybuilding was my passion. I wanted to eat and train and, you know, you're not doing that,

“drinking and doing recreational drugs. How many people were on the club?”

When I got in, Sean, I think there was, in that chapter in Chicago, I think, let's say about 30, 26, 30 guys, I believe. There was another chapter in Rockford, Illinois, which is two hours from Chicago. There was another chapter in South Bend, Indiana, which was two hours east. So all total,

that we had. What kind of backgrounds do these guys have? A lot of military guys. A lot of

“former military guys, um, in blue collar guys, working class guys, you know, the president that”

that was before me in the henchmen, he, he, um, he, uh, was a mechanic at a big trucking company, Mac truck. So big mechanic and stuff. So a lot of the, a lot of the guys were working, you know, working normal jobs and, you know, hanging out and done and doing stuff like that. So a lot of different backgrounds in that club, you know, blue collar though. Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, I did, uh,

the stuff always really interested me, especially, uh, when I started contracting, uh, for CIA,

started looking and, uh, all the stuff in it. If I remember right when I was reading about it, it seems like a lot of these clubs got developed right after, or around the end of World War II. Yeah. Yeah. There's nobody would fit back into society. Yeah. Is that, that's 100% true, especially, you know, with the Hell's Angels and guys were, you know, and the bomber squadron in World War II, right, and the planes. And you see, they had the Hell's Angels death from above, they called it,

uh-huh. And, uh, then when they came back in society and, you know, would live in the life that they lived and, you know, wanted, you know, or looking to do that, they didn't fit in nowhere.

“And that's how the birth of the, the clubs I really believe became like that, you know,”

these guys started the club, you know, they named themselves the Hell's Angels in 1948 and San Bernardino, California, that's the 1948, is the birth of the Hell's Angels and San Bernardino, they call it burdu, California. And, you know, so that was, you know, from the military, the Hell's Angels and stuff, you know. Um, so a lot of backgrounds like that, you know, the blue collar guys, the military

guys, you know, and all these different clubs, you know, I, I always say this, the fellows are the

same, the patch is different. There's nothing really different, you know, from the outlaws, to the angels, to the, you know, to the Mongols, to the pagans back in my day, right? I don't know how it is, and I've been gone a long time, 20 plus years, but it's the same fell as different neighborhoods,

“different spots, you know. You know, if I was, uh, maybe in this group in Tennessee, I would have”

looked up to the, to the outlaws, you know, they were down here back then, you know, so, um, I just happened to be part of the henchmen in, you know, looking into that, we merged with the Hell's Angels, but, uh, yeah, that was the background of all these guys, and it was all the same, and it was said,

we're all, like, all likely manner, but that patch and that structure separates us, and sometimes

that that blurred the lines of what, you know, you see now and became them big, uh, like the column wars, but became them big skirmishes with each other, you know, all over egos. I mean, did anybody or does, it's just so similar to the military, it seems, it's, it's, I'm not trying to, uh, you know, compare notes here or, or back stories, aren't they, but it's just, I don't know, the draw seems very similar to what attracted me to the seal teams that tattoos, drinking,

demonizing, barfides, wars, like it's just, you know, it's all, it's, the culture is very similar, for sure. And, uh, do you look at people's backgrounds within the club and, I mean, how do you get respect in the club? Does anything from a previous life get you any respect or is it all within them? What do you do when you're there? Yeah, it's what you do when you're there, you know, I mean, backgrounds, you know, you could be a scholar, you could be the best

seal, the best, whatever you were at, you know, but they're going to judge in how you are and how you act and how you are in the moments and stuff, you know, I mean, I seen a lot of guys coming to the club and not make it, you know, just couldn't, uh, mentally, you know, run them late hours or, you know, be part of that and, you know, um, had a few personal friends of mine that are my dearest friends to today and to in particular and, uh, you know, they wanted to come in the club

and now, at this time, I'm the president, you know, when we were already merged to the angels, but the, the story of the president and they came to me and I said this, the same for you guys, I said you see the fun stuff, the running around, the women, the party and the red carpets roll and out to us, but, uh, you're not seeing when, uh, when one of our guy's daughters is jumping up in the casket, rubbing her father's hair for the last goodbye and, uh, we laughed and joke about

you know, God had his hand on us all. I said, because you guys would have been doing the,

the penitentiary shuffle with me, you know, later a life right then, uh, you know, I seen guys and not everybody is, it could make that cut back in the day, you know, it took a lot of dedication, a lot of time, mm-hmm. And, you know, being ready for what we've seen was coming, I seen the, the big play comment, you know, especially when we decided, we all agreed that we were going to merge and, you know, join the Hell's Angels and write in the backyard of the outlaws, who's,

“you know, started out back in the day and I think they started out in 35.”

I think she 35, Sean, yeah, I believe that's their start date. Wow. When they started, I don't know if you've seen the movie, bike riders, that was all about, you know, the outlaws, they were Chicago and the top rocker and they had bottom rockers that outlaws, they only had when they started the chapter in Chicago, then they grew into Milwaukee and grew, you know, how big they are now, changed it to outlaws and then the bottom rocker for the state.

So that was their hometown. That was where they were dominant at and, you know, a dominant one, per centers there. Who were the, who were the premiere, or, uh, long gangs at the time? So the outlaws, the Hell's Handschman, another club called the DC Eagles. We had, there was a black club called the Hell's Lovers. There was a club called the Wheelman, the Ambrace, which they got absorbed by the outlaws. Later, once we, once we made our play,

and became at Hell's Angels that kind of threw the city up for grabs there, and the outlaws went to these other clubs and said, hey, you're going to make an alliance here with us or you're against us, you know. So what I'm asking is, where I'm going with this is, did you, did you look at any of the other clubs to see cultural differences, what they stand for versus,

“like these guys stand for, what the, there has to be some kind of difference, correct?”

I always think so inside their structure, I would imagine, but I just happened to meet them guys,

right? And they were part of the henchmen. So that was the only bike crew that I got to know as far as, intimately, right? I didn't get to know the outlaws until later in life where I, you know, seen their structure. I knew they were there. So there's no like shopping around. You're not going to go to this club and that club, but I'm just saying which one I like better. No, not at all, because if they knew, you know, I was running around with the henchmen

being seen over there. And now all of a sudden, I'm by them. I think you're a spa. Yeah, they'd probably thought I was doing something, you know, that I shouldn't have been. So it's kind of like, you know, the neighborhood and who you met, like I said, if I was in Tennessee, I would have been probably met them outlaws and, you know, joining that, because I liked what that was part of, you know. Good job. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. So we, so you, so you get patched in,

do a two or three day bender in a, what a year or two. You become sergeant of arms,

“body year later, sergeant of arms. Now I'm an officer for the club, right? What do you think?”

Got you that position. So that's the enforcer, right? It's the enforcer. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, my size I was and, you know, could somewhat fight and, you know, I wasn't chuckle Dell at the time or anything like that, but I can do throw my hands, right? And just being around constantly all the time and them guys see in me in action from the prospecting days. And, you know, once I got my patch, you know, we were still fighting with the, with the DC equals back in the day.

And, and, you know, they made me the sergeant of arms. So there was two of us at the time. There was a sergeant of arms that they had and I just joined in the ranks with him with all them guys. There was two of us that were the sergeant of arms. Let's go back a little bit.

Let me hear about your first, the first time you got into any sort of a fight with these guys.

We'll just describe the scene what you felt. And so the fellow's got jumped. I wasn't part of that one when when when when about four or five guys got jumped by about 15 guys. And then they came back to the club house and then, you know, we we had a meeting the next day. You know, going over everything that happened. We put a crew together a few days later. And we went out looking for these guys from different, you know, part of bar to bar to bar.

And we got a phone call from a friend of ours that was in a bar and said, hey, there's three of these guys in here. They're hanging out in the corner, laughing and joking, partnering it up. And then we said, okay, that's where we're going. And that's when the fellow showed me about cutting the phone lines in the back, coming through the front door and back door, keeping it covered.

You're coming in with us. You got the sapples on in the ball, peen hammer. We're going to beat these guys.

“Dr. Teeth out of their mouth here. Right. And that's what it's going to be like. We're getting them.”

And I said, okay, cool. So we said, okay, cool. I mean, you didn't grow up, being the shit out of people. You got in a couple of fights in school and now you're cutting phone lines and being the shit out of people that we haven't seen hammer and fucking gloves with babies. Yeah, right. Jump right into it. Right into a little hesitation. No hesitation.

I wanted to be, I wanted to, you know, they got our brothers right. And I felt that I always used to say

we feel that. When one guy gets it, it's all of us that gets it right. And they got our brothers. So we're out adrenaline up, you know, I'm on the edge. I'm not partying doing anything like that. So I'm completely just full of testosterone, right? And then here we get the call. They're at this bar. So we knew they were there. So driving over and the way into the bar, we were in a fan. All of us in a van. So everybody kind of knew it. Everybody knew what they were doing.

This guy's going to watch this door. Nobody leaves. Nobody comes in. There's no cell phones back in the day where there were. They were them brick phones member. It's so nobody's taking any camera shots. Cut in the phone lines. Nobody was going to press charges because the bike or

clubs couldn't do that. So as long as you weren't caught on the scene, you were never going to get

caught because they couldn't say nothing when the police came. The bar owners and patrons sure weren't going to say anything. They were like, oh, we don't know who did it. So, you know, it was like free rain. And that was the first time that I got to feel that. And I was in first with some of the guys. It was me and three of the other guys. And we rolled in the bar. And by the time these guys turned around, we were already had them. They were in a corner. The bar went like this and they were up against

the wall in a corner. So they couldn't get out of the corner. And we were just banging them in that corner. You know, and then this took to when we were leaving when they were like, all right, let's go. Let's go. Everybody out. You know, how is the, you know, newly in the club and to look back and see that? And then get back in the vehicle. And we were all like, you know, just that adrenaline rush and everything and felt that. And that just took me. How bad do you

fucking up? I mean, these guys go into the hospital, broken leg, they go on home and their wife's putting a thing. I saw their face. So like, how fucked up? Yeah, this incident here, they called the empty ambulance, had a come and take them, broken legs, teeth out. You know, the ball peen hammers, we used to say, like, we're not going to hit him in the head because we're not trying to kill them, right? But in the mouth teeth coming out. I watched many times teeth being spit out on the floor.

Why don't you want to kill them? Um, when that particular incidents with this club, we weren't, we weren't on that lot. We weren't there with them. This was just the fighting, the getting each other,

like that, mangling each other up. It never came to the shooting the bombings, which we encounter

later is, well, you know, as we'll get into. So is this pretty common? Or I mean, I get, I know it's common. I guess what I'm saying is, uh, use of deadly force, maybe isn't a thing in motorcycle gangs, quite yet. Well, or just not with us in that. Yeah, not with us in the DC goes. It wasn't to that level yet. There was no, nobody got shot and nobody knew what I mean. Yeah, it was just all hand-to-hand stuff. Gotcha. You know, and, uh, but we took it to a level with them. We were out all the time.

We called them the hunts. All right, let's go out and hunt around and see who's who, you know, see who's out and stuff like that. So, um, and I got into that. I mean, I remember just being

“in strip clubs with girls all around us and laughing and joking and our pageur would go off, right?”

The pageur days, a pageur would go off and I'd look at it and we'd, I get on the phone and you'd burn her phone and be like, what's up? Hey, there's three of them here. Girls were out, see, and we'd get in the, we'd get in whatever we were, you know, if we were on our bikes, we'd take the bikes home or to the spot we were at. We never, we never tried to roll in, like, it's hard to roll in. The bikes are coming. Everybody here is a bike coming. Now they're all

you're beating the drum on the way in when we were doing the hunts. We were all in just flannel t-shirts and baseball hats and not trying to show everybody who we were. They knew who we were, because we came in the bar people knew who we were, the other club knew who we were. So we, me and the, the crew that used to go out and do the hunts all the time, we all got addicted to that. To where we were being like, we could have had the best looking girls all around us doing whatever they

wanted for us and we were kicking them to the curb. We got to go addiction to adrenaline. Yeah. And just just getting into that, that, that fighting and that... You fiend for that. I fiend for it.

“That's why I say it now. I don't dip my toe in any of that. You know, it's hard for me to,”

when I am telling the stories that go back, because obviously, you know, or I'm at life

we do talk about this old stuff a lot, right? And here we are with you doing it. And sometimes

it's hard because I get that dopamine back in my mind. You know, and it reminds me of them all days and how I felt back then and as that young, youngster running in and, you know, with that violence and the power and everything we had and, you know, by the time I'm in the club of year or two, everybody knew me on the streets from the outlaws to all the other clubs. They all knew road, you know, I was that young jacked up to do it a lot of the bike clubs weren't bodybuilding. They weren't

big like there was some big farm-fed dudes, of course, and, you know, some crazy tough dudes,

“you know, that I wouldn't know one at the fight, but, you know, I had that aura about me, right?”

And, you know, so I was very well-known now in the city of Chicago of what I was doing. Did you ever get your ask it?

Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about the first time that happened. Yeah. So we were in this bar

and a couple of the guys from this other club came in, and we were outnumbered. And we ended up taking it outside. We ended up, you know, started it at the doorway. We seen them coming in. We tried to jump on them as much as we can and we ended up taking it outside and a couple of broke ribs. I think the one guy had an ax handle, swung them, ax handle, or baseball bat, a couple of broke ribs, and one incident where I was in a bar, and I got

knocked to the ground in the outnumbered us in the bar. And I remember holding on to the bar stool. I had my head shunned. My body was laid out. I was on the ground. I was laying on my chest, and I had the bar stool, or my head, and I was holding on to it like that. So they just couldn't

get me in the face, right? A pretty fucking smart old of the bars, though, right? And they were

nailing me in the ribs with steel, toe boots, and, you know, so I've been on the receiving end of some ass kick and it's like that, you know. But then as I got a little older and we got into what we ended up getting into ice, the state of the fellows all the time, I'm not getting hit in the face with a ball-pain hammer and ax handle. So if the team comes in, if the other team comes in the door and we see him running in like that, I'm pulling out. That's the cards we dealt. I'm not, you know,

and later that happened, of course, you know, with the outlaw work, I got so crazy that there was no more of this. I mean, we'll talk about that. That got into a whole other realm of violence where nobody was looking to fight anymore, you know, but back in the back to back it up in that day, you know, I felt the ass kick and, you know, so I knew both sides of it, but it didn't deter me. I was like this as the sergeant of arms for the henchmen, you know.

Interesting. I mean, you talked to a lot of the military guys, the soft guys, anybody that's been to fucking war, you developed this addiction to, yeah, action to the adrenaline dumps to

“everything no matter what happens, you just want more. I think one more up. Yeah, you get a”

retire, so I was one more planet. Yeah, you got 25 fucking deployments. But yeah, okay, can you describe what is a daily routine at the club? Once you're a member. So once I became a member, and I got to see different things and I got to see more of the underworld and stuff, going to work became a little bit of a hindrance now because now I'm a member and now I'm really out on the scene. No days off. I'm out every night running around on my motorcycle,

getting up going to work at, you know, 637 in the morning, kind of getting taxing on me now, right? And I'm starting to think like this is, you're getting to be a little bit of a burden here, but I need money, right? You need money and a pay your dues. You got to be your, you're going on runs. That costs money, right? So one of the fellows showed me the cocaine game,

“and I remember telling them, I don't know anybody that does this stuff. Everybody I know is from”

the gyms and their meat heads and stuff like that, they're taking steroids and he goes, you be surprised how many people you know that, you know, do this, do the cocaine stuff, you know. So once I started selling and I wasn't doing it in the bars because we didn't, we didn't have that luxury. I wasn't, you know, we were in the bars for a mission. But I ended up knowing some people where I can, you know, sell a quarter ounce and ounce a couple ounces a week and

stuff like that. Once I started making the money that I was making porn concrete, that's when I went and had a sit down with my boss who was like, I'm dear friends with him today, and I told him, "Meral, I said, I'm, I'm going to give you four weeks. I'm going to give you a month and notice. I'm calling it a day." And he goes, "What do you mean you're calling it?" They were, "Where are you going?" Or, you know, "Who's stealing you for me?" I said, "I'm not going to work."

And I said, "Don't get into the drug game, man. I can't do this no more in the club. You know, I'm in the club." And it's just taking a lot of my time. And I don't have the luxury of giving up the hours to work. So I'm getting into this trade. So once I was making that money, you know, a thousand bucks a week, 15 hundred bucks a week, I wasn't alcapone, looking to be a

“millionaire. I just needed an income to facilitate the way I needed to live life. And that's how”

that started with me with the drugs and that led into bigger things, with the kilos. And, you know, now I was really making some money. But it wasn't ever about the money to me, Sean. It's like today.

It's like I look back and I say that to all the time, God always had his hand on me, even though I

didn't know it. And you know, the Bible says you can't serve God and money, you know, because you become a slave to one, right? You know, so many people that I know and you know are just addicted to money, right? Making money becomes a idol. That wasn't it for me. I just needed to make enough money to facilitate the way I lived. A few different spots I lived. I had multiple girlfriends. Now, as I was, you know, in the club, different motorcycles, you know, now I graduated from the

Irox to the Corvats. Now, I had the every year, I had the vet of that year, you know, so 91. I had a 91 vet 92. And making enough money to go live that one percent or lifestyle, right? I didn't go above

and beyond. There was many times that I passed on some deals, because I didn't want to be involved

in it. And I didn't have the time to do it. You know, and I could have made a lot more money, but I'd like I said, I just wanted to do that. Just enough to facilitate it, you know. So I ended up, you know, quitting the concrete and just running that, which made me be able to be out in a street much, much more as, you know, as we were still henchmen. And so that was, you know, 89, 90, 91. Now, 92 came. And we, one of the guys that was in the henchmen did some time in the

federal prison with the Hell's Angel. Adam and a soda. And when they came home, they remained friends.

“And that's how we got to meet the Hell's Angels, because of them two guys' relationships.”

Were they a lot bigger than you guys? It's time. Or were you bigger than them? Yeah, they were a lot bigger than us. The world lied. You know, we said we had the three chapters. They had chapters all over the world. You know, how did the country and the country, their Minnesota chapter? So they had Minnesota. And then they had nothing through the Midwest where we were. And then the angels had a chapter in Ohio and then South Carolina. So that whole Midwest gap that was right there was all the outlaws.

That was all their territory. The angels had never been into the Midwest until us.

Gotcha. Yeah. So so now comes the where, you know, we're talking to these guys and going to meet them, going on some runs that they were on, you know, some bike events and stuff and getting to know this Minnesota chapter and their guys and our guys and stuff were intermingling and talking and then one day they sat down and they said, hey, what would you guys think about rolling the hell's henchmen into the hell's angels? And we were like, yeah, it sounds pretty cool.

I mean, you know, the hell's angels? No, yeah, just like that. You're like, yeah, yeah, fuck it. We like that. There's no, I mean, I wouldn't think there would be a somewhat offensive. Like, I mean, maybe not there are global organizations. Yeah, I got three chapters, but I would,

“I would think there would be some club pride that's like, why the fuck would we want to do that?”

Yeah, well, there was with some of the members. Not everybody went. We gave everybody a chance. We took a two-a-vote, two-thirds of the majority ones, right? But we all, you know, the guys that we were talking to the angels, we were the younger guys and we were like, yeah, that's pretty cool. You know, the hell's angels, the number one, you know, the biggest club right back the back then. And the more of the, where the biggest, absolutely, yeah, most chapters, most guys, the biggest club, you know,

and the outlaws were right there with them. They just, you know, the angels didn't have nothing in the Midwest. You know, they were, you know, and just as the back in the day, the outlaws didn't have anything on the West Coast. That was angel territory, you know, from Minnesota West, was all the angels. The outlaws had Milwaukee and all through the Midwest and stuffing Indian on North Carolina and stuff like that. So, um, as we were talking to them and getting to know them a little more and they said, you know,

what would you guys think we all sat down and some of them came to our club house and presented it to us at a meeting and we took it to a vote and the majority said yes and the guys that didn't want to anymore, they just hung it up and they just, they just exited from the henchmen because once we, you know, we had a prospect for the Hell's Angels, they just didn't give us the patch.

Does that mean you're an FNG all over again? Yeah, they treat you the same way or they look a little different.

“Yeah, a little bit different. They were, you know, they knew what we were getting ready to go through”

because they knew us becoming Hell's Henshin or Hell's Angels rolling from the henchmen in the Midwest. They knew what was coming. They knew that the outlaws weren't going to just sit back and go, come on in. That's, they've been mortal enemies since the early 70s, fight in constantly on different costs. What here is this? This is 92, oh God, 1992, 1999, so 89, 1999. I'm now in the club for three years. Sergeant Varms for the Anjman, courting, you know, with the angels and stuff talking to them.

And they knew what was going to happen. We've talked about it. They said, "Listen, you guys are,

you guys make it in with us, and you become Hell's Angels." You know, them boys ain't just going to roll

over and say, "Welcome to the city." It's going to be a fight tooth and nail because we're coming right in to the heart of where they started. And we were like, "We get it. We get it. We didn't get it." I don't know. We thought we got it. And we were like, "Okay, we want to do it." And we did it. And so we had a, we prospected for them. Once, once we made it official, they made it official, then we started our prospecting period for them. We're in our own jackets, you know, our

Hell's Angels and colors. And now we're really traveling. And how do you prospect? But they don't even

“have a club where you guys are at. So what do they send some supervisors down or something?”

That too, but we traveled to them. So you constantly, yeah, I was constantly back and forth to Minnesota.

But then having to be home because we had to take care of the backyard. I was going to New York all the time. I was going to California constantly to meet the members in a leadership out there, making their parties, their anniversary parties. We spent a busy year with our guys, you know, all of us, you know, "Hey, you got, we hit this last part. You three go hit this part. You go here. We're going here. They're calling us over here." So we prospected like that. They didn't,

they didn't dog us down. They weren't telling us, "Hey, go get us a pack of cigarettes from the 7-11 and bring it to Minnesota. They weren't doing stuff like that." Okay, so it's like a respect thing, because we were a no. Like changing fucking teams in the MLB or changing services and, you know, from, yeah, Navy to the Marine Corps or something like that. A lot of respect there. And they knew, they knew that. What we had to take care of our backyard. And, you know, we all kind of knew that.

It was going to come to some fighting with them with the outlaws. You know, so we would get back home. Nobody would say, "Hey, we need you out here for two months. We'd go hit a party. Go hit a, a run or something and get right back to our home ground in Chicago." You know, what were you seeing? So you had three years is a henchman. So any buyers remorse, any immediate, like, oh fuck, maybe we shouldn't have done this. No, they don't, they don't

run like we do. Our shit's better. No, no, we like them. We like that. Yeah, we like to what we seen. Different guys meeting different guys. The brotherhood that they had, you know, the way they were running their individual charters and stuff like that. We were all in for that. The guys that said yes and we said we're all in for it. Like I said, the guys that didn't want they left. So now just, just go back to my Chicago chapter from them 28 or 30 guys that we had.

When we made it into the Hell's Angels, when they gave us that patch, 12 or 13 months later, there was 13 of us. That's it, 13 of us in Chicago. 8 to 10 in rockford, another 8 to 10 in Indiana. That was the three chapters that made it because a lot of guys said we don't want to do this. What was the discussion like when I mean, when you guys had that, when the two clubs came together to discuss it, and then it's just the henchmen. What kind of,

“I mean, what are the pros and cons you guys are going over? As just the henchmen team?”

Yeah, we were talking about, you know, what they all was working on, how are they going to feel and what we were doing. But you know, we said this is what we want to do and we're not going to let anybody stop us from doing it. We met these guys. We liked them. We had a great relationship with the Minnesota guys. They were kind of our so to say sponsors, right? Even though we were prospecting for the club in a hole, but they were the closest ones to us. So they were kind of our

overseers, our sponsors. We had a great relationship with them. What did you guys like so much? Well, it's one of them asked him. Do you just like the bigger club, the bigger network? Yeah. The being a part of the Hell's Angels, the premier motorcycle gang, and the

say, and we, you know, we'd be structured to say in the same kind of mentality. But now we're part of the biggest motorcycle club in the world. And, you know, like I remember sitting with one of the angels. And he's like, man, we're giving you guys the world. You guys are giving us the

Midwest. And, you know, I've always remembered him saying that, you know, we're going to be a part

of this and stuff. And so we had to do our time and meet everybody and get to see everybody. Because, you know, they voted on us just like the same way. You know, our these guys ready. We're going to bring them up for a vote. You know, and they brought us up for a vote. And now, as we're still henchmen, and now that the word is out, that we're prospecting for the Hell's Angels, tell us, got all of us. Because, you know, they knew some of the henchmen, the henchmen knew them.

We, you know, interacted with them on the streets and stuff like that.

“And we sat down at a meeting with them in a restaurant. I think there was four or five six”

that are guys, four or five six of us. And, um, and they said, hey, we heard a rumor. I heard a rumor. You guys are going Hell's Angel. And I wasn't surprised. I was a sergeant. I'm sorry, President at the time said it's not a rumor. We're prospecting for the Hell's Angels. And they got up and pushed their seats out and they said, see you when we see us. And they walked out of that restaurant. And I remember like it was yesterday. I remember looking at them. One of

their guys eyes. He was from Jamesville, Wisconsin. And a big dude, a big tall, big dude, man. And he's the one who said it. We'll see you when we see us. And they walked out and we were sitting there. And I was like, I'm thinking, man, we better tie our shoes up. This is going to get real here. You know, they're pissed off. They were so mad. They didn't jump us. They didn't scream at us. They didn't

“swear at us. They just basically told us exactly what was going on. I remember us getting back”

and we're like, okay, you know, and, uh, and no boy, you know, we we thought we were ready for what was going to come. But, uh, we did not know what was going to come. Yeah, but here we are. The fuck were you guys doing up? Three chapter of motorcycle gang going after the biggest, the biggest gang in the Midwest. Yeah. Yeah. I know, I'm pro. I look back at it now. And I'm like, you know, I mean, I, I probably wouldn't have changed it. You know, that young version of me

of the old version. I was saying could, would have said what the young version and the young version would have kicked me out of the room. Like, beat it. This is what we're doing. We made that decision.

We said, here we are. And here's what we're doing. So, you know, we kind of let them, um,

start the ball rolling. You know, we didn't go, we knew what was happening. But we didn't go out,

“looking for them. Even though the angels in the outlaws were head that ongoing feud from like”

the 1970 on, and they were to forget each other and martyrs and different things in different states, um, you know, we didn't jump right into it. Say, "Oh, let's go out, looking for these guys tomorrow now. We just continued to be prospects and learn the hells aimed away and meeting everybody." And, you know, we had to go through the formality of it all, right? And, um, as we were prospecting, uh, that's when they came in and they killed one of our president. That was

the president of Rockford, Illinois, by the name Amani Mathias. Been a henchman for many, many, many, many, many years, uh, had a bike shop, drag racer, you know, um, just a blue-collar dude, man, and a good guy. I was really close with Amani as a young kid, you know, as that youngster, to help take me under his wing and showed me that brotherhood way and everything like that. He was the first one that got murdered. You know, he had a bike shop, so he's, he had to be there,

you know, where a lot of us, you know, that didn't work. We were never pinned down the one place.

And, uh, and they sent, uh, one of their guys in there and, uh, and brutally killed them in the bike shop. I'll take him, um, you know, the shot him at first. He was behind the counter. One of the guys went in and there was some guys outside and he came back out and he goes, he's in there. So he went in and he bought some spark plugs. They all bought some spark plugs. And when he came out and he was like, he said, they're alone, you know, and they're like, if you can get them, you know,

this is all court documented and stuff because they got arrested and he went back in and Amani had sent something, was wrong. You know, he sent something and he was a big dude. Amani was a big workout guy. And when he came in and said, oh, he's all these spark plugs and can work to not kind of fit right. He pulled out a gun real quick and he shot Amani in the shoulder and then a chest area would a 45 caliber gun kind of spun him around. And when he came on the other side of the

around on him. But as he was firing, Sean, it was just going past them. He couldn't get it up to his shoot him in the body or to face just firing to pass them. He unloaded the clip. He doesn't have a gun. There was a screw driver in the top of Amani's counter to saw it grabbed it and stabbed

“Amani off through the neck and everything. I believe now, thinking he killed them. So as he's”

going to go run out the back door, Amani shop had them overhead doors, but he had pins in him and he couldn't open up the door. He couldn't feed it nor the pins were. So he had to come running back through. And when the coroner's got there by the time everybody got their Amani was drained out of blood. So as he was running back through, Amani trips him again. He falls into Amani's blood. It's all over the tile floor. And he grabs another, he grabs that screw driver,

again, and finishes the job off. You know, Holy shit. You know, you're going to speak with Chris Bayless tomorrow. You know, and you're going to hear a lot more of the story from his end, you know, the retired ATF agent, but trained Amani blood there. Got out, got back in the car with the fellows. You know, of course, they got out of the edge and everything. They didn't get caught later until they

“took a recoil indictment. And, you know, some of the guys flipped and put the story together, right?”

But so Amani was the first one. So I remember getting that call, getting a page 9-1-1

stopping at a pay phone and in the fellows telling me, Amani, just the Amani, they just found Amani murdered at his shop. So we all jumped in the vehicles, got up to rock for the places, you know, we couldn't get near the place with all the police presence and everything. And of what we got to hear how it happened, you know. So that was the first act of violence. And it was what an act, right? I mean, they went right to the heart of it, right to Amani, who was, you know, the known leader,

you know, Amani was the one that was pushing with the rest of us to become angels. And, you know, up there in Rockford and they had Milwaukee and the state line guys for the outlaws, they surrounded

“them right there, you know, they had them, you know, they knew his play. And that was the first one they got.”

So now, here we are, like, and I'm remembered what that guy said, like, see, what we see. And I'm like, man, that went from escalated from this, because there was a few fights before, it's just a few, you know, little bar fights with us in the outlaws. Now as we're still

onchman, but that was pretty quick. We didn't even have our Hell's Angel patch. So Amani was the first

Hell's Angel made. He was the first one. He got buried with his Hell's Angel colors. Why we were still prospects. Shit. Yeah. So the scripture war begins. So it begins. Yeah. Yeah. Let's take a cook break. How much your life liberty in the pursuit of happiness worth to you? That's the question America's founders had to answer. From more than 150 years, the colonies governed themselves until Britain stepped in and said they had no right to self rule. So ordinary people were forced

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It's only in theaters May 31st through June 2nd. Go to hillsdale.edu/revolution to get your tickets now and find a theater near you. You don't want to miss this on the big screen. That's hillsdale.edu/revolution. Welcome to Hollywood vs. Reality. What does he do in the movies? Tell me if I'm doing this rock, because I don't watch it. A little flick like that. It seems pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Got a silence in.

And another lifetime I did gun reviews for a living proprietary magazine. It's supposedly the best engineering in the world. When that breaks, you're f***ing. And now we're bringing it back.

All right, Mel. We're back from the break. You just got patched over to

the hillsangels. Yes. And the war has begun. Money. Money Mathias being the first of

the casualties right there. It had to be 1990. And you weren't patched yet. We weren't patched. We're not still prospects as money. As money happened. He was the first one. And as I said, he'd be used the first one to receive his Hells Angel patch. And that casket. And you know,

“I remember that. Like it was yesterday because money had a real long, salt and pepper here,”

big dude. Just the guy who showed me a lot in life. And when we were getting ready to close the casket, we put the patch over. We take his vest and put it over and shut the with the Hells Angel

part up and shut the casket. And it was a me and a few guys up there. And, you know, his daughter,

his wife was there, his little girl, and she leaned over her dad's casket and she was rubbing his hair, crying tears in her eyes, tears in our eyes. Just thinking of myself, man, we did this. We just was a heavy feeling on me, Sean. I was just, you know, our actions did this. But when that casket closed, then we started walking away with the fellas. There was hundreds of Hells Angels there from around the country, hundreds. And I remember telling my guys, like,

let's give them one by the end of the week. It's changed the mood from glad to sadness. Because that's all. We knew we didn't know what to do. You know, when in Rome, and there was no more of this. It just came right to the, to the, how do you take it any farther

“than that, then, then the murder, you know, you know, what did the Hells Angels say?”

When you guys reported that to them. I mean, you know, of course, they, a lot of respect, you know, for what we were doing and what we stood up to decided to do. I mean, I don't think there was too many guys in the club around the world. You know, around the United States, at least that, that didn't know we were in the middle of the hornet's nest. You know, like I said, we didn't know what was going to happen. But I knew it wasn't going to be a

peaceful thing. We just didn't know how far it was going to escalate, you know. And then we became a group of guys that had to go, you know, retaliate and for our brother, and we couldn't do it by this no more. That was out the door to go in and on the bars, what I was just no more. So now we had to, you know, to pay it back the way, you know, the way they were doing to us shooting on one of their guys, their presidents got shot off as motorcycle on the highway.

One of them, by a few of our guys got him on the highway, which we just later came out in the Riko indictment that I got Riko for. That was one of my predicate acts for. Even though I wasn't there, but I knew it was happening. And I cleaned the mess up with the truck. I had to truck, you know, my guys truck repainted and brought it to a buddy of a mind's body shop and changed the color around that truck today. Have it out in the street in the morning. So I obviously, they knew I

knew about the crimes because, you know, when the Riko case was getting put against us, we had some members that flipped for the government and told them the stories, right? So

in my Riko case was just, it was a, it was a, it was a Riko conspiracy. I never got caught in any

of the acts. I never got caught with any of the drug transitions, transactions. I just, it was all, the people coming in before me saying, this is what I did with Mel. This is what he was involved in, you know, less time to get out of jail free car. Not to get out of it, but less time for them, guys that were co-operating witnesses against stuff that was going on in the Riko. So how long

“after this did you patch over? We 1994, December 2nd, I believe, is the date of 1994 when the”

hell's henchmen became hell's angels. What was that like? Yeah, that was an amazing feeling, right? I mean, even though we lost Monti and we did our patch ceremony at the Rockford Clubhouse, the hell's angels that came in with our, with our patches and stuff. We had people there, it was so and so on machines and everything like that. And we took them hell's henchmen vests off and I had a new vests and everything. And so the hell's angel patches on our, on our stuff. And

And you know, and we'd have you feeling, because we just lost Monti. We were in his, his home,

“his clubhouse there. We did it there like that. But for the rest of us, it was, you know, we made it.”

We're here. Here we are. We made it in the club now. Now we're officially hell's angels. And you know, now, you know, knowing that the stuff is not going to change or like, oh, the patch change. Let's leave these guys alone. It was worse, right? Because now we're here. Now we got the patch

flying down the street that never has been seen in Illinois before. Now the deathhead's there with

the rockers. And here we are, you know, the three chapters, you know. So then, you know, the violence kept, you know, coming. We ran into a couple of them off in a bar. We didn't know they were in there. We happened to pull up. They were in there. And, you know, we got the jump on them, ball peen hammers, beat them, beat them a couple of them up with ax handles. And we had a, you know, when in Rome, we had to, you know, do that. And we always just to say to each other, we're not trying to go to

prison. We knew it was there. I used to tell the, the, the, the new, the prospects coming in. That that we had a lot coming in at them days. You know, nobody was wanting to step into that scene. Not a lot of people. But I used to say, if you're afraid to go to the penitentiary or afraid to be a tombstone on somebody's arms, probably is not the crew for you. I used to tell the guys all the time, save me a good spot on your, on your chest for, you know, when I go. And they'd say,

man, don't say that, Melanite, say, well, how am I, I'm the poster child here? Because now I became the president shortly after we patched into the hell's angels. That quick. Yeah. So the president, that was the president of the henchmen. I was still the sergeant of arms for the angels now. Now I'm the sergeant of arms for the angels. And that president, that was the former president of the henchmen, you know, he had 20 something years in the club already. And he was the president

for like 15 years of, you know, before that. And I was bouncing all around, traveling around.

“I got real close to some new york guys. Would you travel around for for meetings and stuff?”

No. Okay. Yeah. For meetings and, you know, if they have office or meetings, you know, I was going as one of the officers, you know, taking the president of the henchmen, you know, going, me and him going together. I was a sergeant of arms. I was a security meeting all the different angels from around, you know, I got tied with a former, a former hell's angel by the name of Chuck Zito from New York. He ran the New York crew. I was going out to the West Coast

all the time. You know, got to meet, got to, you know, no sonny barge and George Christie and that whole crew that ran that West Crude, you know, the California crew. The West Coast.

They were always good to me. I was that young dude, man. And they, they seen what we were doing

and what we were willing to do for that club. So they always treated me very respectfully. And, you know, I looked up to them guys because they were in the club for many years and they had a legacy with the hell's angels. So I, you know, I just tried to sit back and learn and watch how these guys did certain things. I mean, not everything. Every charter is a different, you know, spot. But, you know, I interviewed George Christie. I did hear that. Yes. I did hear that. I gave them

more of those books. We were just talking about, oh, you did. Good. I hope you read it. Yeah.

“Not sure where George is at with his faith, you know, I think he's close. Yeah. I talked to George”

here and there from time to time, still, you know, him throw him a text and stuff like that. You know, I seen him three, four years back when I did John for a Thos podcast because John is up in Ohio. And that's, you know, connected to venture there right next door. So John got to know George from some gems. So they surprised me with George coming on to to see me at the podcast. Yeah, I asked him. I said, but the end of the interview, I said, where do you think you're going?

Heaven or hell? Wow. He said he didn't know. So I gave him more of those books and told him he doesn't have much time lefty, better fucking dead end of that between the siege zone.

And so we're toasts close to do. Chris said that it is disciples. I always say this the last thing

he said before his feet left this earth where he walked and touched as, you know, and the last things he said to them disciples were go and make disciples in all the nations, baptizing them and the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit. It was a command for all of us believers to do. You know, it's like the word says you don't put a lamp on a light stand and cover it with a towel. You let that light shine. And that's where work to do to everybody

that's around us. We're not ashamed of our faith. We will stand for our faith. If it comes to be being beheaded in our faith, because that's what the, you know, it says in the end

We're standing strong. Because we know where we're going when we're done. It's already one.

We know we're going to, you know, be being that eternal paradise with this body. Well, my friends ask me, oh, you know, because, you know, they're trying to, you know, count, you know, to, uh, pray up onto the concept of everything. So we're going to have these bodies.

“I go, yeah, you're going to be all tattooed up. I go, I, I don't know that knucklehead. You know what?”

I mean, I don't know if I'm going to be 300 pounds, 150 pounds, we know we're going to have bodies like when Christ walked the earth with all the disciples. We're going to have these bodies again, glorified, no heart disease, no pectures, no all this stuff like that. So I tell everybody,

we know where we're going. And as we're taking this journey, it would be a disservice for guys like us

that know the Lord, to not shine it through, which you do. I mean, a lot of people tell me a lot of people are attracted to you and your podcast because you're a believer. Some people don't know the military stuff with you. They didn't know your past, but they go, man, oh, that's Sean Ryan, man. He's a believer. You see the people he's got on his show. That's gold or making an impact, bro. I was really gold to hear, you know, back to Los Angeles. Okay. So, um, so now you're getting ready,

so you were just going into, you're going to be president, the president. So now I'm the sergeant of arms. I come to a meeting. I'm a few minutes late. I call up, hey, boys, I get stuck by a trainer, whatever. I'm going to be a few minutes late. We're all into the meeting. They're all sitting there.

“And then president says, hey, you're not the sergeant of arms anymore. And I said, what?”

Yeah, we took it to a vote. I said, well, how could you take it to a vote without me here? They did another trick on me. So how could you take it to a vote without me here? Because it's every year you have a vote for officers on election. And he says, we want you to be the president. I said, what? And Jerry says, you've been on the right side of me for so long. You know what's happening. I'm a little older now. You travel all over all these guys in Oya. And it's the perfect fit.

I was like, wow, okay, monitored and ripped the sergeant of arms tag off. And so the president tag on me and, oh boy, that was a whole world of 20, let's see, 24, 24 years old, any four years old,

24 with that new title. And the first murder was done. You know, in the back and forth was already

going on. And knowing that, I had a real big responsibility now. Right, John, not only to keep to protect the crew and the guys and keep us all safe, but to move forward and to not get eliminated there. As you can see, you know, gets deeper and we'll go into it, but the all laws were not playing any games and they had a crew. Well, boy, they had a crew. We weren't dealing with some, it was a pushover by no means. And they had a legit crew that was willing to take care of business

at the drop of a hat. Right. So then maybe a handful of months, one of my guys from my own charter by the name of Jack Castle, we called him for, by he got murdered. He was sitting out in front of his work, drove a truck, a big dumb truck. He was sitting out in front of his work, reading the paper, drinking a coffee. In a car came by and stopped and unloaded a

“fully automatic, like a cab, I believe it was, right into his whole head.”

That's job, one was somewhere laying on the street, just, you know, brutal right there. So I got that call, we got that call. Went over to, you know, try to get by the scene and stuff, you know, the cops were out there and stuff. So that was now Monty's killed from Rockford, but now it's in my back, it's home for me, just last four by. So, you know, we're trying to figure all that out and to keep our guy safe and to move forward. We couldn't just hide in the clubhouse,

we had to continue to hit the streets, do what we do, and be in gravely outnumbered. I mean, we were outnumbered five to one, at least. I said, we were 13 of us, 8 to 10 in Rockford, 8 to 10 in South Bend, number two hours from us. Them guys could put 100 guys together in 20 minutes. So they were hitting all the big bike functions where we couldn't go to, because we couldn't go with 20 guys, 30 guys, and there's a 100 at M, there's been a bit of slaughter right there,

right? So we had to go and do the old art of war and do some things, you know, and through the alleys, as I say, we had to get, you know, to some, the underhand stuff, the shooting on the highway, the shooting and in Indiana, and we just had to, we had to do like that. It wasn't too much that we can,

and we have, you know, 60, 70 guys, and we just go, now we'd go hit some swap meets and pound

the street like that. But when, when everybody went back home, it was just us. It was just us 13 guys trying to make sure there wasn't another money and there wasn't another four by. And you guys

“are taking action against them. We're trying to take some action against them on the sneak, right?”

So we couldn't, you know, we were going out to bars with our crew. I was out all the time. We were out constantly in the streets hitting the bars, hitting this and that, you know, maybe we'd run into, maybe we wouldn't, you know, if we ran into them in the bars, it had to be this, because nobody was doing it right in public in the open, right? We used to say if, if that opportunity came up and you're going to shoot one in the kill one,

you're not going to do it, you know, with 300 people watching, you're going to do that on a highway or in a backyard or somewhere where you can, you know, possibly get away with it, right? So all that, all that was going on is some of the president. And, you know, and now I'm to target for these guys, right, because I'm all over the place. I'm training in the gyms. I'm at every strip club. I didn't join the club, but that young age, and now to be 24 years old,

to be sitting in the clubhouse, partying and watching TV in the clubhouse. I needed to be out. I needed to women. I needed the fix. I was an addict for for all that. The girls and I needed that whole lifestyle. So me and my crew were constantly out on the streets and then the bombings came.

“Before we get to the bombings, what is the outlaws' goal? Is it to kill every single one of you?”

It's to make it to where there was no hell that we couldn't be. There was no hell's angels in the Midwest anymore. That was their goal, right off the bat, which is what they should have done, right? They did what they were supposed to do. We were the crew coming in and turning in the hell's angels. They had to get us immediately because why are you going to let us grow? So what's your goal? We obviously, you can't kill every hour under some of them.

Right. Yes. Our goal. We guys, 23 of you guys? Yeah. Yeah. Our goal was to obviously stay safe, not be on the other end of that murder, but to also establish ourselves that we're here. We're not leaving, and we are going to be on the streets. We didn't become the hell's angels to sit in the clubhouse, like I keep saying. That was our goal. So it was like we had a balance in it. Your goal is to survive and grow, survive and grow, and not

initiate violence against at the outlaws. At first, we were trying not to, but when they

“brought it to that violent level, they're keeping score in that one-personer world, right?”

And if it just keeps happening on one side and they keep doing stuff to us, guess these other clubs are going to join the forces and say, hey, we'll join you guys or we'll come over your way. You guys are manhandling these angels and they ain't doing a thing. Couldn't happen. We had to be productive in that world. You know, and it was scorecard going on behind the scenes. So how are you going to grow when you're up against hundreds of them? Yeah. There's

30 of you, and only 13 immediately available. Yeah. And we weren't growing as far as new members coming in. You know, in the decade, I spent in the club. I sponsored one guy. Are you fucking kidding me? I'm one and I grew up with them in my neighborhood. Tough kid. And I knew he was he was for the cause. I sponsored one guy. I think through that whole time, there was probably only, I don't know, maybe five, six guys that came in total in the Chicago crew. Holy,

so guys weren't wanting to sign up on our end, especially when they were seeing what was going on. Everybody wants to be a gangster until it's time to do gangster shit. Right? Boy, that's the, I feel that one, you know, I feel that one, you know, because after after the war stopped and, you know, I was gone and, and, and, you know, away for the first prison sentence and stuff that I came home and it was, no, a bunch of the new, the truce was on and all of a sudden

there's five, six new guys in the charter and I'm like, huh, we're vulnerable. Good to see is wherever you guys, but you don't, I mean, you can't take that stance, right? But, um, yeah, so it was, we weren't really grown, so I really objective was to keep ourselves safe and to go out and make

that name and that one percentor world. I always say this, what do you mean make that name?

That name, that we're here, that we're, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're the angels, we're here, we're strong, we're not going anywhere and we're also going to give it back to you. So how, how are you going to, how are you going to make that name, um, you know, back through the

do the most violence, whether you lose guys to the penitentiary, you lose a one to murder,

do a couple to murder, whoever's willing to do the most violence is going to be the dominant one. And we had the outlaws that were proven to us that they were willing to do the violence. So we had a, a give it back to them. We couldn't just sit back, you know, and meanwhile, the angel charters from around the United States were looking at us too, like we bet on the

“right horse here. Are these guys going to fold? Are they going to get ran out of town?”

Are they not going to be able to handle what they, you know, what, what brought to them? I didn't want that on my watch, right? So I, you know, I, I had to learn that violence in that type of way. And like I said, there's no playbook in that one. I didn't have nothing to read. I just was going by what, you know, what they were doing and saying, okay, let's give them a funeral by the end of the week. Here we are. Hate, hate that we're in this position. I mean, a lot of us weren't

raised like that. But, you know, we adapted when we had to. And, and, and, and kept that charter moving forward. And, you know, and, um, after the, the, the truce, you know, we sat down with the many years later and said, hey, nobody's went in here, but the feds in the penit and the, and the graves, you know, the graveyards, let's put our differences aside and see if we could practice the good

“neighbor policy. But that was that happened in 98. So from 94 to 98, that four years was going”

shootings, bombings, murders, just to turn it upside down. Janet Reno was the, the returning general of the United States back then. And they put a full court press on me and five of the guys they call that operation, Lucifer. They hit our houses through the midst of all this, five of us, big money spent on all this and stuff. And at the end of the day, two years later, I played guilty to misdemeanor possession of steroids. So it was a flop right, John. And all our guys were like,

ah, look at that waste of money and waste the time. But I always seen the bigger picture and I

said, listen, we beat them this round. It ain't over. Now they're really mad. Hence the ETF and the full court press later with the Rico, but you know, we were all, you know, everybody was jumping up and down. We, after all that time and hitting five of our houses and coming up, I mean, at one of the guys' houses, they were scraping a mirror to get some cocaine off it. I mean, taking specs off the mirror and stuff like that, the guns they had in, in his house were good

to guns. I, I wasn't a felon at the time. The guns I had in my house were legal, you know, but I had some steroids in the house because I took steroids, right? So, you know, I played guilty to misdemeanor. So that was the egg on their face back in the day. That, you know, that's all that came out from us. And then the full court press came on. Once the, once the, the shootings really didn't do it, the murder of money, yes, they were, you know, we heard, of course, the feds

“are watching you. But, once the first explosive one off, what did this first explosive go off?”

Um, oh, it had to be, the end in the early '95. I think that was shown the first

debomin, how did it happen? Um, they put a hundred pounds of C4 in a trunk of a car, shaped it. They, you know, they know what they were doing, shaped it the way they needed to shape it. Trow it up. We run this busy street in, in Chicago called Grand Avenue, busy street at two way street. It was like five or five, 30 in the evening by the grace of God. Nobody got hurt or killed. Nobody was in our clubhouse. They thought there was, because there was some cars out in front,

couple members from Minnesota were in town visiting. We had rooms at the clubhouse, you know, where they could stay, you know, rooms, you know, bedroom, some stuff. And, uh, so they thought somebody was there. They were out sightseeing in the city, seeing the different sights of Chicago, with some of our guys. So nobody was there. So they drove that up, put it against the door. This is the clubhouse. They parked that car. So nobody could get out that front big door that we had.

And then a car picked them up. We seen it from this surveillance tape from across the street. There was an auto parts store across the street. We had a camera over there. And that member that outlaw got in the car and just made it down the block and that thing went off. So we found out later through their trials and stuff. That that member, they drove that car. In the right at the corner was a gas station. They went into the gas station and pulled this lithium

piece of paper out to start that timer. How about that guy driving that thing?

I love the dude driving that. I don't remember his name or I didn't know him, but I mean, I was like, wow, that dude had to have. No shit. That's right. Yeah, for sure. He was a man. He drove that car to be like, I'm, uh, can we just set the car there? I'll pull the pin, but I got to. So in that one off on the middle of the week, five, some 65, 36 o'clock in the evening on the busiest street. Crazy part is one of the Chicago cops was going by and he looked and he seen the car up on

the sidewalk. And he was like, ah, it's probably just the angels moving, moving some stuff out of their in and out of their clubhouse. If that guy would have stopped, he would have been killed.

“That explosion, you know, I, obviously it went down first, right? I think the hole in the sidewalk”

was five six feet deep. Then the concussion came back up, knocked that car completely down the block. They found the VIN number. A mile away, um, hit our front door, blew the front door through the black door, cracked the foundation. Was an old Chicago building, so it had a basement that was

under the, the sidewalk, you know, the concrete, a first floor in a second floor, right?

Cracked it all the way through the concussion, bounced off, went across the street, a bus. You could see a bus with full of commuter people just went by like 50, 40, 50 seconds before it gets by out of the way. The glass goes across the street and across the street was an old Chicago siding house, aluminum siding house, just blasted the siding off the side of the house. So the, the, the, the, the Fed said that is there. I don't think it changed. It was the third largest bomb.

The first one being Oklahoma City to second one being the trades towers, but from the bottom, you know, when they blew it from the parking garage, I said this on another podcast and they're like, no, they were thinking I was talking about the plants. It was from when they blew up the trade

center from the, from the parking garage and then ours, the third largest, the whole thing.

Yeah, 100 pounds is even. Nobody got her, nobody got her, or hurt, or hurt, killed nothing. Well, I was some past four planning. Man, they thought we were in there, you know, in here and now, you know, knowing how the explosives work and if anybody was in that clubhouse, I mean, they would have blown out their everything. Uh-huh. Her air drums are eyes. If you did live, you'd be miserable, right? I mean, that thing was when I, well, I got the call. I was at home

and I lived about 30 minutes from the clubhouse in my phone, started ringing and one of my

“one friends said, hey, man, I think your clubhouse is on the news. Turn on the news. And I go with”

channel. He goes any of them. Oh, boy. And I go, what? And I turned on the news and I seen grand Avenue and there's an explosion that rock to rock to city. Oh, blah, blah. So all my guys start to call me up and I'm like, all right, let's meet at the gas station. We're, you know, we're, we're running a corner where that guy did that. So we meet down there. It's all rocked off. We can't get down there. And I'm standing out there with the fellows. You know, in here comes one of the

federal agents and he comes down and goes, hey, road, he goes, come here, man, can we talk to you? And I said, yeah, I brought one of my guys with me and I said, what's going on? What do you think happened down there? I said, I don't know. We're about to watch that out in the news, right? And I said, what happened? And then explosion went off at our building and I did a pipe bus, did a, he goes, no, I'm going to put it in a bomb on, I don't know, front of your clubhouse in a car.

“He goes, who do you think did it? And I said, I don't know, you know, standing line, who knows?”

I don't know who's mad at us, right? And he goes, okay, and I said, uh, can I come down and see the spot? Let me see. Yeah, come on, we'll walk you down. He goes, you can't go in. It's a crime scene. I said, okay, it's walk down there. We walked down there and, but at the building and seen the door and the whole front of the place blown backwards in. And like I said, they didn't let us in. I'm just like, okay, so now Washington, flew in. Jan arena sent the whole team from Washington.

And then they seized, then took over the place now, you know, for active crime scene, they were, you know, swiping in, you know, making sure they got everything they needed to get. So we had to do shifts out there because the place was wide open. There was bikes inside there. All of our personal stuff was in there and everything like that. So we were doing shifts, you know, because they wouldn't be in there online. So we had members sitting out in the streets,

making sure that nobody could just go walk right through the front of the building.

And I think they had that for a couple of weeks, Jan. And then they finally hit us back and said,

okay, we're done here. You guys can go in. And when we went in, literally literally, look like the bomb. I mean, the place was just, you know, the upstairs had a big barrier. It would have banned stage and everything like that. Nothing was left. The bottles of booze, all knocked over that concussion just blasted everything, ripped a stage and in half, you know, but concussion went all the way up. So, you know, it was a mess there. And so that was,

that was the first one. Are they sending any communications in the interim?

not talks. No, don't you and your guys talking about that we don't know this bomb thing, right?

And I was talking to my guys and I said, guys, I mean, I don't barely know how to put the pager and the battery and my pager. I don't know this stuff, this explosive stuff. I said, but, you know, one in Rome, now we got to do this. So we're trying to figure out how we can

“do the same thing back to them. We're not trying to figure out demolition demolition, right?”

None of us knew it. I mean, none of us had known it. And, um, meanwhile, while we're trying to figure that out, bomb number two goes off. They put a bomb underneath, one of the guys cars from Rockford, one of his trucks, remote starters, that we all had remote starters. After that bomb, I had a Corvette, remote starter, looking underneath the car, what a mirror, had all the spots. You know, I had an easy out of that. It was loaded at a ground.

These guys had pickup trucks. Sky Roger had a pickup truck from Rockford. Starts at remote starts at all good. Gets in the truck, puts in reverse. They tied it around the yoke. Bam, do you know that the string goes off, blows them up in the truck. He lives. He lives. He lives. Die is a couple times on the way to the hospital. He flat lines. They bring him back to life. Vance pumping blood, the back of his legs, all gone. That thing was right

underneath him. We get the call. Now we got to go two hours away to Rockford to do a shift with him in the hospital. Now he's laying up in the hospital fighting for his life. We can't leave him there alone. 24 hour around the clock because we're thinking they're going to come in and finish him off. So that was a bomb number two. We were like, man, they're taking this away from us. They're taking the fight away from us now. Now they're really getting in personal, putting these bombs and just,

“you know, walking away. And then how are you in your guys handle them? That's what we'll be. I would”

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“so that's what we weren't doing that. We had to get out. I was still going to the gyms and training,”

bringing a little crew with me. You're pretty vulnerable. When you're a bench and are doing some work and out and stuff and some dudes walk in the gym, they all knew where I was. I didn't hide it. I was out. I had to be out. So we were definitely trying to bounce through all that

and figure out a way that we can pay this favor back to. I'm with the second bombing

that they did. And that's what we did. I had found somebody that was a former military dude and we knew him very well. We was in another smaller club and wanted to become a house angel. I knew the background for some of our guys in the club and I said, "Okay, can you build something that's going to do that same thing to their club?" And he said, "Yeah." Then I said, "Okay, that's that's your gig." Get that thing done. You still got a prospect. You

and we just gave you the patch. But let's put a firecracker around their clubhouse. I told them,

“you know. And that's what we did. We ended up putting a bomb on their clubhouse in Chicago.”

That's not a hundred pounds to see for. You know, he made this one by hand. But then they got the message back. We got him to. So then that, you know, now now they're looking under their cars. Anyone? No. No. A couple of people were in the clubhouse from when I was told Blue their front door out their side wall, you know. And I think that's somebody living back there. That they took in, you know, had some concussion stuff done. From what I was told, you know,

on that end later and hearing it later in life. And now that woke everybody up on their end now, because now they've seen that we were in the same plane field as them, you know. Yeah, just escalated so fast with that violence sounds like it. Yeah, you know, and I used to say all the time, I'm like some of us were so deep in the forest. We couldn't see the trees, you know. We just had to keep going and doing, you know, what they were doing to us.

“We kind of let them set the pace a little bit back in the day. You know, they beat up a couple”

of people that had our support T-shirts on, you know, the friends and, you know, that would come

and buy a support shirt at the parties. We never put Hell's Angels on anything that went out to the

public, so it would be the support of your local 81, you know, eight being the age in AB and the first letter of the alphabet age being the eighth. It's support of your local 81 Chicago. And they started beating up the citizens that were wearing support shirts, you know, and I never wanted to do that. We never wanted to go take that to anybody that was just their supporters. But when in Rome, so we had to do the same thing. Starting to grab their guys up,

letting them feel that. They took a couple smaller clubs in and they said you're going to prospect for us and we're going to do the same thing. You guys will, we'll become all of us. And we went and hit the smaller clubs right away because they were just, you know, a mind-pop club that we're enjoying life, riding their motorcycles without a car in the world. Now they're prospecting for the outlaws. They weren't used to that lifestyle that one

percent or they weren't living it. But the outlaws were growing in numbers because they were taking these these smaller clubs over. So we were like, well, let's welcome them to the lifestyle. And we'd go pound on them fast. How would you get this information on who they're, who they're absorbing? You know, just from all the street, we knew so many people.

I would always hear what they were doing. You guys are working sources.

Yeah, yeah, keeping people in the streets telling us what they're doing. Hey, they're taking this club over right now. These guys are prospects for them. We're they hanging. Let's go get them immediately because they're not used to this. The outlaws were used to it all. That was just part of the everyday life like it was ours. But when you just take a new crew in and you go, no, you're part of this now.

Oh, by the way, you know, as you see, we're at war with the angels. That all sounds good until you and Jojo are super tight and now Jojo's not there. No morning or like cheese. So that's the that's the play we took on that. We were like, let's get these guys and kind of welcome them to that lifestyle. And when they're getting beat with ball pain hammers and shot off their motorcycles and stuff, they were like, holy cow, we didn't

this wasn't in the brochure. Why a ball pain hammer? You know, uh, I learned that trick from the old school angels and it was like, it's not a weapon until you used it. So you could have that ball pain hammer in your back pocket, right? You know, it was it was not a weapon as a hammer, but that was an amazing equalizer, right? I don't care if three or four guys jump you. You pull out the ball pain hammer and you're swinging that across their johns stuff. You know,

you're uh, you're getting the job done. So we always had them ball pain hammers, the handles,

fiberglass handles, sticking out of our back pockets. I used to tuck it into a bandana. So it's slide right out of my back pocket. And you know, you can use that at any time and on top of I had two guns in my patch. I had a 45 and a nine that were sewn into like that and a knife and stuff, just 45 and a nine. I like the nine back in the day because it held so many in the clip and it was fast and at 45 was it was the equalizer, right? That thing would stop a truck, right? So

one of the old two guys was like, listen, you got the you got the gun with that, you know,

“that can hold 15. I think I remember back in day one in the chamber in the 45, the cannon.”

So I always carried two, you know, what else did you carry? All being hammer 45 and a nine

in the club taught me some knife hand to hand knife stuff, you know, to where I when I grabbed a

“knife for the first time I had it like this and I was like, and he was like, no, it showed me how to”

spin it around and military dude showed me how to use it that way because you know, being big and stuff and he was like, listen, you're no good if you don't know some of this, you know, a lot of guys that were big in my size, the body builders, they couldn't throw a punch right there, you know, you could see it coming from five miles away and we obviously we couldn't be like that. So there was no UFC MMA back in my day. So I was going to a local gym where they were boxing and hitting the

bag and learning how to throw from my hip and straight out and everything like that, change the dynamics of the power around for me, you know, I thought I had a strong punch when I was just the meat head, you know, and when them guys showed me how to throw from the hip in the throw, boy, it was powerful, right? I had a lot of power behind me and then learning the knife tricks and

stuff like that. So, you know, we never knew when it was going to be hand to hand when we were

going to walk into somewhere, they were going to grab us because they were they were doing the same thing. It's funny because I became friends with some of them guys after I exited that lifestyle

“in the traumatized the Alps, I became friends with some. So that that thing was I think that was”

98, I think we're we sat down and said let's let's settle our differences. I went up to prison when I came home in 2001, I was on a non-association and I got to know a few of them guys and hear their their sides and you know, they were thinking the same thing, they weren't just trying to go murder us in the middle of the street so they got caught and locked up. They were trying to plan things out so they could get away with the two, right? And they had a job to do it

just like we had a job to do. Their job was to see you guys are talking about how you were planning on fucking killing each other after you got out of prison together. Yeah. Right, yeah, I know, showing them is crazy. You got any uh, did they have any surprises for them? They were like, oh, bad, that would have been a good one. I found out this and I found out this from Chris Bayless, the retired ATF agent that we have here. And he interviewed one of these guys that flipped. So

“I used to hang out at this one strip club in Chicago, I'd called Jimmy's, it's like my office,”

I was in there, you know, five, six days a week. If I wasn't in the city, I was in the suburbs at this place and three of these guys were in a van out in the parking lot with fully automatic weapons. My vet was parked. I had a special spot for my vet that they let me park. I parked right in front of the place. Like an idiot, I had, I had Mr. 187 on the license plate of my vet, which was the penal code for murder in California. I ended up getting that play, right? And that blue is on my vet.

Everybody knew my vet. And they were sitting in a van, automatic weapons waiting for me to walk out. They were going to open up that sliding door, boom, boom, boom, boom. I'm gone. I'm not getting the nine. I'm not getting the 45, right? So, um, and a Chicago Heights cop pulled up and he pulled up in the line. He stopped next to my core vet. Well, he called me. I knew the guy from the gym. And he goes, hey, bro, I see your hair. He goes, come on out. I want to see and say hi.

So, as the cops sit next to my car and I come Walton out the door and the cop gives me a hug and we're talking because I know him from the gym. I'm all I'll see that and we're like, man, "Kit, let's get out of here. Back out of this alley and get us out of here." Right? So, they pulled

out and I would have never known that. But Chris told me that later because when the interview

one of them guys in that van flipped and worked for the government, he told him the story. We almost got Mel. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So, that was kind of crazy to hear that. And I didn't hear that until I was sitting in my recoil indictment and I got to meet Chris and, you know, he was telling me he's like, "Listen, you really do got a guardian angel on your shoulder." And I said, "Yeah. Why is that?" And he told me that story. And I said, "Wow."

And there was no way in the world when I'm going to go, "You know, they got me right there. They all had automatic weapons and they were going to gun me down right there." Yeah. Yeah. You know. And then later, you know, about probably four or five years ago, I became really good friends with one of their former sergeant of arms. And he just passed away from cancer about a year ago. Super good dude. His name was Tony Wallenberg. He was, he was their hitter back

in the day. He was their sergeant of arms. He was the guy that we all, I always heard about.

If you run in the Tony on the street, you better get the jump on him because he's prepared to go at any moment. He had that reputation. So, when I got home from the recoil, I moved the Florida, reminded a few years back, a mutual friend of mine called me and said he was sitting with Tony.

He said, "He has a relationship with the Lord. I go, "Come on." He was he said the same thing about you.

“I go, "Yeah. Wow." He goes, "You want to meet us for some lunch?" And I said, "Man,”

Jodie, I would love to meet you guys for lunch." Took one of my friends with me because I wasn't sure if he was on the old page, right? I was like, "Okay." And we went and met for some lunch and started laughing and joking and telling some old stories. He's been gone from the alas for many years. And it was crazy to hear that because, you know, he told me he goes, "Well, we were, you were the guy, man. We were at our site set on you. We just knew we had to be that perfect time.

We couldn't just waltz into that gem. We knew it was going to be. I'm like, "Yeah, I would have been a shoot all right on the spot. I wasn't, you know, if I would have seen your comment,

I would have had to do it. I had to do it. So it was surreal to sit with Tony and talk to him and

hear his side of the story's back from that day when he was in the, he was the sergeant of arms and the height of that, height of that war. And then he just passed, I don't even know if it's been a year, Sean, he passed for some, from some lung cancer. But I got to be close with him. I'm still, I'm still close with his boys with his sons. We became close like that. He left that world behind. I left that world behind. And I seen the dude I liked and he seen the dude he liked. And I told him

right before he passed, I said, "If your boys ever need anything because they're like in their 30s, they're still in Chicago." I said, "If your boys ever need anything, I said, "Please, Tony, tell him to call me. I know a lot of people. They were in the construction business now. I said, "I know a lot of people in that lifestyle, man." And I, I talked to his kids for every holiday. Oh, let's go on that. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of surreal to hear what, we know both sides

were, what was going on in our minds at that time. All about it is. Yeah. Man. Wow.

“What are you guys doing for money? How does the club make in money?”

So the club in the hole, you know, does the club have to make money? I mean, doesn't have to, but it's nice to have a treasury, right? So we would throw parties, tickets to the parties to get in full bars. You know, we have to call them donations. So it didn't look like we were running any kind of thing. So we'd say a bear is a $2 donation or whatever it was. A mixed drink is a $5 donation and they'd get tickets. We put out a calendar every year.

The Hell's Angels put out a calendar every year with a member on the cover. I was on the 1996 calendar of the Hell's Angels. I was on the front of the cover. And then every month in there would be a different Hell's Angel from all around the world. So the calendars sold for like $30 a crack, you know, we had that. So still in the support shirts, the T shirts and stuff like that, you know, hats and member, you know, stuff like that,

trinkets like that. So the club was making money for the club as far as, you know, you know, in our bank account, the individual guys, whatever they wanted to do. A lot of that, I told you a lot of the guys had jobs. You know, even though even if it was when we switched from the henchmen to the angels, they kept their jobs. That guy that was the president, Jerry kept this job at Mack Truck all the way to, to, he exited, you know, um, or totally retired from there.

What about arms dealing, drug dealing, yeah, prostitution? Yeah. What about that stuff? Yeah. So that's kind of what I got into because I didn't want to job and I didn't want to punch a clock. And so I was able to get my hands in that underworld with. So is it, is it for you personally, or is that for the Crimea for the slow? Yeah. So we paid dues every week for the, you know, the club to keep, you know, the lights on, the air condition around in the building and everything like that.

And I believe that dues were $30 a week back then, you know, $30. We paid the dues and that went into the treasury. If guys had a travel, our expenses were taken care of from the treasury. But if you were doing something on the side and the visually, we didn't kick to the club because there's a Rico in itself right there because that higher up, whoever's the me being the president, if I'm on the top of that food chain and I'm getting kicked up, you know, there's a

Rico indictment there. So we didn't ever do that. Whoever was doing anything on the side that was their own money. So the club funds were actually, they were procured legitimately. Yeah, not illegal activity. 100%. Like I said, from the parties, the shirts, the membership dues and

“everything like that, you know, that's how the treasury was done. Nothing, the individual was”

the individual. I didn't kick a penny back to my charter for any of my drug sales or gun sales or anything that I was doing. Were you around 11 with my, no, no, I loved them too much, Sean. I was, you know,

I was just into the being with the women and hanging out with them. I never, we never, none of us

the cocaine. I had a cocaine source that was outside of the club, nothing for, you know, they weren't

members of the club. And the people I was unloading it to weren't in a motorcycle club. I had some guys out east that were, they were taking them kilos of cocaine and automatic weapons. We were getting them on SKS, Chinese rifle spec in the day. How old did you get them? From a guy that was sourced in a mountain, you know, we were told they were falling off a truck, but we had a guy that, well, enough the truck scene, we had a guy that was, he got his hands on him, not in the club,

and outside a guy that I happened to get to meet. And so we were getting crates of them, you know, and I'm kind of things were okay because one of the guys knew how to saw that barrel down on that SKS from when I remember. So it was kind of a short, like a shotgun type deal, and you can hold it like that and shoot that way. So we were getting them by the crates back in the day. So I had my hand into that. Where would you keep them? We had a side of storage locker. A storage locker

that only a couple of us knew about. Not everybody in the club knew it was there. Just a few of my close guys knew that I had some stuff in this storage facility. We'd keep them there, but I would unload them pretty quick, you know, if I got some crates and I put a tax on them and sold the crates

“and stuff like that, you know. I had a great stare right connect. Who would you could you sell them to?”

I sold them to a motorcycle club on the East Coast and they were facilitated and I'm where they were doing the same, you know, the same seems, but I was offloading the cocaine from. Did you guys wouldn't keep any for yourself? Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, we had a stash of an armory for ourselves to when we needed some stuff cranes. We had the cranes, you know, by the

grace of God we never was able to use them. I mean, there was a lot of plans going on and you're

going to hear the stories of how the feds were able to run in their parents on them plans because they had the ATF agent up in rockford that was prospecting for the rockford Hell's Angels. Hell's henchman slashed the angels at the time when Chris got in. He got in when we were still henchman. And they wanted to pull them out when things got crazy through the war. You know, when things were the bombings and stuff like that, they were, you know, we're like, "I will hold on,

we get you an air deep, you know?" So there was a few missions that we were going to do that we had all planned out to go get them guys. And I remember one of them and I wasn't, I was out of town and the fellows were going up to rockford and they called me on the phone

“and the members say, "Hey, we're pulled over at the highway." So what do you mean you're pulled over?”

The Illinois State Police knocked us down on the highway and I said, "Okay," and he goes, I said, "You guys are dirty right and they go, "Of course," and I said, "Oh man." I said, "Okay, call me when you can." If you guys get locked up and you need bond, you know, give me a call me and we'll get to get the treasury together and see what's going on. I'll be waiting for your call and he call me back like 15 minutes later and he goes,

"They turned us around, told us to get out of town, go back home." I go, "What?" I go, "No, they didn't search nothing." He goes, "No, nothing." And I, you know, I kind of thought it was weird, but I didn't know that that was the knockdown to turn us around because where we were going to get the outlaws in the support club at this party. It was going to be a surprise on them all. But they knew what we were doing because Chris was a prospect and he had a full

member, a full member that brought him in. Holy shit. No one he will he was. No one who he was. Oh yeah, he bought him. He brought him in. He got himself in a jam.

“I believe, and Chris knows the story better than me. I knew the guy a little bit. The guy that”

was up in Rockford. I didn't know him great. He was a fairly new member. It's kind of older at the time. I kind of thought it was weird. He was in his 40s and when they were telling me that they had this, his name was Grubb, that they had him up their prospect. And then I was like, "How old is he?" And they were like, "Ah, 46 or 47?" And I'm like, "What's he have in a midlife crisis?" Like tell them to buy a Corvette. Like, does he know what he's doing? It's 40 something.

There's only once I come into this club, I'm what we're doing. But that's Chris is in. And he knew Chris was the agent and brought him around in Bouchtform. So he was previous because Grubb sat in the meetings. So anytime that Melinda crew are coming here, Chris would know

and Chris would leave because Chris never really wanted me to see him or because we grew up in

towns next to each other. You know, you've seen this as a real, I showed you. We grew up right very close to each other. We ended up knowing some mutual people after we got to know each other.

and saying, "Hey, the Chicago crew's on their way here right now to go storm that place and

everybody in there." So they got knocked down in that one. Um, uh, I know there was another incident that they got knocked down on. Chris left the refresher memory on that one and then I was like, wait a minute. This is too coincidental. How are they known? What we're doing? How did they know to knock you guys over on the highway like that? Were they, are they following us? You know, was just, but later we find out that, you know, Chris was getting fed all that information from the

member. So now we were up kind of against more fronts. We didn't even know about, right? And we didn't know that was happening. So we were like, man, every time we go to try to make a move here, the last two times, we've got knocked down. We've got pulled over and like, it's like they, they knew we were coming. They knew we were coming. Wow. Yeah. What was the first time that

Chris, um, it, when he's story. So I never seen him, obviously. Um, he recalls a story that, um,

we were going to, um, I was coming to the clubhouse. He couldn't leave. We were going to a party in San Francisco. And as a prospect, you know, he was, he had to go. And, uh, he said he came up to

“to me and introduce himself. Hey, Chris prospect, brockford. Because that's what you had to do”

it to the members as you were prospect. You had to introduce yourself. Every member. You know, I, I probably didn't pay attention. Hey, how you doing? Good to meet you. That's about as far as it went. But, um, so the first time I seen him is, our doors got kicked in four of us on that Rico, uh, the morning, um, two rockford hells handles me and my sergeant of arms from Chicago, kicked our doors and, um, he wasn't at my door, my raid. He was out grabbing the rockford

boys because he knew him. So they got to find out on the spot that Chris Decker was his last name, was actually Chris Bayless under cover ETF. That's been prospecting for you guys. So they got the shock of their life that morning, right? They got their doors kicked in, federal swat teams there and there they're seeing Chris who they thought was, you know, their prospect. So we get down, every they bring everybody to the federal courthouse in Peoria, which was like, um, about three

hours from Chicago. And I was the last one they brought there. It was my sergeant of arms, the two rockford boys. They were all in a cell together and, um, the feds told them we got one more coming and they were like, road and they're like, road, you know. So they brought me in there, you know, sat with them. They give us the indictment. We're in our street clothes because they just knocked our doors and braided my house at, uh, about five, 15 in the morning. All of us at that

same time. They did us all at the same time. So you can't get no phone calls out. So we're reading the indictment and everything and it's, it's, it's, it's this, the Sean right, and I'm looking at all this stuff and you're shooting on the highway, the bombing, the attempted murder here, the drug deals, and I'm just reading this whole indictment like, uh, boy, we're no bond.

“I was already to the state and federal prison. So I kind of knew the time and how the law worked, right?”

This is 04 December of 04. So now they bring us in the courtroom. So we're sitting in the courtroom. None of the boys have been to the federal courtroom yet, right. My sergeant of arms was locked up for the state. He wasn't to the feds shut. And I'm looking up at the, at the U.S. attorney stand and that is desk, you know, before we start the, the actual hearing. And I see this, a biker looking to a ponytail, beard, and I'm looking at him and I'm looking at him and I go, I said, hey, guys, who's,

to biker looking to do it? I go, anybody know who that dude is that's standing next to the, I go, that's the U.S. attorney that's getting everything ready, the judging on the seat yet, right? We're sitting there in handcuffs at one table. And I go, who's the, who's the biker looking guy in the, the rockford guys kind of put their head down. And they said, oh, his name is Chris Bayless.

“He goes, uh, he was our prospect, but you remember him. And I said, no, he goes, he was, he was a prospect”

for us for a while. And we just found out he's a federal agent. I went, hmm, f minus on that one. Like, you know, like, wow, okay, because they were, they were dealing with them. You know, they didn't know. And Chris got in and, then his job and we did what he was supposed to do, right? And got in there and infiltrated it and was able to put this record together. Because the agent that was working our case before Chris, it's a guy by the name around homes.

And, um, you know, we, we, we, we, we always knew that there was the, the Rico stuff that they could

get us with, right? Well, this guy just was a pitcher taker. He had a million pitchers. He had an obsession with me. He had a million pitchers of me, parties here and there, but they didn't have nothing to move forward from. So they had this case that they were trying to put against us. And he was like

They pushed him out and Chris got in there and took it over. And Chris was doing the undercover infiltration of these clubs. He already did the outlaws, a handful years before us. He got in with an outlaw chapter. And he did an infiltration on them. I don't know what you know. You know, we didn't know. We didn't talk. They couldn't say, hey, this guy is a fed. They weren't talking us. We weren't talking to them. So he knew the infiltration stuff with this, with the clubs.

“And that's what he did in Rockford. So that was the first time that I seen him when we were sitting”

in that courtroom. First of all, laid eyes on him. Yeah. Yeah. Damn. Crazy. So we were talking about the bombings, the attempted murders, the murders. How are you keeping a relationship with your daughter during all this? Ooh, from a distant shun. I was keeping up. Excuse me, I was keeping the family's thought very separated. The same with my girlfriends at the time. I wasn't bringing anything around them.

I wasn't bringing them around that lifestyle. I didn't want them to get hurt in that lifestyle. So I was, you know, popping in and seeing my daughter. You know, uh, isn't in with her at my mom's house or wherever. You know, she was living with my ex, uh, Jenny at the time. So, you know, seeing her when I can, you know, financially. Like I said earlier, was there for her, but, um, I didn't want to, I didn't know where it was going to go.

You know, there's always an unwritten rule. No homes and no families. I was going to ask that. I was

said, yeah, that was an unwritten rule. No homes and no families. You know, you know, um, you know, and, um, it got violated a little bit on their end. You know, um, they beat up a, uh, one of our guys girlfriends that was a bartender. They, they walked into a bar and surrounded the bar took, took whole of the bar and, uh, she was behind the bar and they busted her nose, you know,

“and I think that, that product to home, you know, you're now your, you got, you're bringing”

them the girls and the family members and and stuff like that, you know. So, you know, and, um, we did that exactly back to them, you know, we didn't want to do it. Last thing I wanted to do was go to suck up some girl, but you brought us there and, uh, I was the one that wanted to do it, and I was the one who did it. You did it. Mm-hmm. I did it to one of their, what to one of their girls and it, it was in a strip club. She worked in a strip club. So, you know, like I said,

not something I'm proud of, not something I wanted to do, but, you know, where were we going next, you know, to the homes, to the mothers and fathers that now we were a real street again, you know,

and I mean, dry buys and stuff like that was going to get to that and never did. But that

unwritten rule was like, we saved it for the street. If we caught you, we caught you. You know, I remember one time I walked into one of my spots where I ate all the time. I just got done training and I went to the spot and I always had just, just did just good chicken and steak there, walked in there and, uh, I seen one of the outlaws with his girl and his kid and the kid, you know, if it was his wife, his girlfriend, but there was three of them and there was little kid,

the girl in him and I knew him. I see who he was and he seen me, man, his eyes got big and I walked over to the table. I had two guys with me, not in the club, two just friends of mine that I worked out with. And I said, I know you know who I am, my son, who you are, and he goes, yeah, and I said, okay, maybe you guys wouldn't do this, but get out, get out of here. You got this little

“one with you. Go. And that's what he did. So I thought that that was the right thing to do, right?”

I always wonder if the girls were reversed with what what they would have did. Maybe they would have

got me out alone. So you know, it's an untold story, but you know, I never wanted to do that. I'm looking at this little boy, you know, five, six years old and, you know, he didn't know what was going on. I didn't make a big deal of it, but I, you know, I didn't want to be smashing his dad or his mom's boyfriend at the table and the, if he was there by himself, Sean, it was on the spot on site. That's what that was our role. If you see him, you had to get him one way or the other,

whether it was just this, if you could do this back in the day and get away with it, do what you thought you could do to get away with, do good. If it was public and you had to get him, but get him, you can't be in the same room as him. And, and that's how they were with us. They didn't hesitate for one second to try to, when they ran into us, to take it to us. There was no hesitation, there was no waiting. If we ran into each other, it was right on the spot.

talking earlier and you heard the story ahead multiple girlfriends that we're living in different houses, obviously different spots and, you know, when a condo and stuff like that, I'll spread out,

you know, and I just never wanted to put them on Jump Street to be on the back of my motorcycle.

And they were going to see me and say, hey, we're going to take the shot no matter what. And then here, I'm telling their family or whatever, you know, that, you know, there, I just didn't want that on my conscience. And so, you know, and I was all the guys used to tell me, just don't want nothing to cover in your patch up. You want everybody to see who you are right in the bike, right? You don't want nobody covered, you don't want to

ride nobody because you want to cover your patch up. But, you know, it was heavy. I look back now,

“Sean, and I think this, bro, like I couldn't do that again for all the money in the world.”

Where I'm at now, am I? You know, much older, but I just could not fathom that. It's the stress. I mean, I get stressed talking about it. Sometimes it brings me back when we get deep. It brings me back. And I think about that. You know, I'm talking about it too much. You know, so my been in Florida 11 years and a lot of my friends out there now. They got to meet a lot of the exchangeals that come and visit me and they get to hear the road stories. You know, they know me as

Mal, but they get to hear the road stories and stuff. And we tell some campfire stories. You know, sitting around and the, but, you know, it's nothing that I'm proud of and I say, man, we did this. I just I don't, my mind don't go to that. It goes to, man, what did we do here? I mean, think about money. I think about four by, I think about Roger who's still living. I believe he's still in the club, but, you know, gotten, we'll get blown up in that truck. I think about the violence that we,

you know, put ourselves in the two and stuff like that. And when I think about it, you know, I try to block it out and I don't talk about it a lot, but, you know, getting ready for this movie. And that's obviously a part of the journey. Oh, this is my old part, right? And like,

“like the rock says, like Duane, we call him D.J. like D.J. says, Mal, you, you have to go to that,”

that party or mind to tell, because we knew you back then, to, to show where you're at now in the

inspiration that you are and the way you gave your life to the Lord, and you never looked back,

and you try to help out everybody. That's from that lifestyle or that person in rock bottom. Like, yeah, I get it. I get it. It was hard. It was hard to get, for them to get me in character for that sizzle, real. It was hard for them to, you know, get that, that deepness out of me, because I think I block it out and, you know, but then, you know, do you remember the first time that you put a head out on somebody? I don't think it was really like, hey, work, you know, it was

in a hole, right? Like, we didn't target one dude from over there. We were like, whoever we can get, you know, obviously the easier pickens the better, right, money at a shop for by at work. As much as they wanted to get me in stuff, I made it a little bit harder for him. You know, any people would say, I don't know how, you, you were out every night. I mean, you can bring a thousand people in here in interview and from strip club owners, the bar owners, if you

had a dehypid and nightclub in the city of Chicago, I was coming in with my patch on, with my crew, no ifsans are but I wanted to hang out. I wanted to be in the street scene, the night scene, then we had to hit the bike or bar. So my life consists that of being out constantly. I didn't have a night off if I did. I mean, I just hung out with in the house for the night or relaxed or caught

up on some sweet maybe, you know, but don't you remember the first time somebody was killed

because of an order you'd put out. Um, well, I like to say like this, the shootings and all the violence, of course I had my hand into whether I was there physically and most of them I was, or whether it was the fellows doing it, you know, it's like, I didn't really have to

“to clean up the phrase. I didn't have to put the order out. You know what I mean?”

Everybody knew what they needed to do is being in the wheel had a polar own weight. Out of that 13 guys, nobody was in the house feeding their cats and grown gardens when we were all out in the streets. We wouldn't allow that to happen. You were coming out. You were participating. You were, you know, being active. If you weren't, you were out the door. You had to participate. You had to be a part of it. You are brothers were getting killed and you weren't

going to just sit at home and, you know, plant tulips. Was the first guy that was killed? The guy that got shot off his bike. He lived. He lived. He lived. He evil connevaled it all the way

collapse the meat back from it. He, he, he was shot away like a third or a revolver in driving down the

highway. There's a chance thing. Nobody was, it just happened to, one of my guys was driving down the highway and there he was, tool in next to him out of the blue. You know, and I knew about it.

“That's why I got part of it. It was a predicate act in my reco and, you know, and I said,”

do what you can do. If it's not too crowded, you can get them, get them. And then we all knew that mentality. You know, if we looked around and there was three cop cars behind them, obviously you're not going to pull the gun out and shoot them. But if you can get away with it, do it. And, you know, he was the one that cut shot up on the highway. And like I said, I ended up, you know, getting the truck back into a body shop in my friend owned and getting a repainted,

because, you know, it was a Saturday afternoon and Chicago and I, like, in the middle of July or

something like that. A lot of people probably seen what went down, you know, so I got that done. And, you know, nobody got caught on the scene. But one of the guys that knew about this happen and from Minnesota, he flipped and when he flipped he gave that up. So, and then I ate the predicate act part about, you know, it's, I might as well have been there, because you're still the same charge. I ate the predicate act of knowing it was happening. Of course, I was the president. They try to

get you for, you know, order it and then I'm cleaning the cleaning the crime scene up with the getting the truck repainted and stuff. So, as much as we were trying to cover every base of not getting a recoil indictment, it's, it's just pretty impossible. You know, like I said, no, nothing, no money went to the club. So, you're thinking, okay, there's no kick-up there, but everything we did is a predicate act. Now, I learned how the recoil works. So, if, you know,

if you're in the club with me and, and me and Sean go out and we find out that there's, you know, a couple of the other team in this bar, we beat him with ball pain hammers and stuff. We didn't do that,

“because of Sean Ryan and Melchancy. We did that for the enterprise, which is the Hell's Angels, right?”

So, that's a predicate act. Even though we didn't get caught to beat him, think it was a simple battery charge or something like that, that hog gets wrapped up into that whole reco thing. What is reco? Raketeerd influenced corrupt organization. Okay, it's the organization, right? And every act that you do, that's, you know, obviously you're breaking the law,

can be thrown in on that, right? So, when I first got this reco indictment and I had a

really good lawyer. My lawyer was my friends since I'm like 21 years old. He became a really prominent lawyer. So, that's who I used and he's coming to visit me. We had no bond. They no bond that is that they were sitting in a facility of holding facility. And I'm reading these charges and I'm like, I wasn't there on this one. Wasn't there on this? It's going on here. I go, this is, it's 2004. This is from 94 and 95. So, I'm telling my lawyer like PJ, is this the week as shit

you have ever seen or what's going on with this reco? Can we fight this thing? And he goes, "Well, there's a 10-year investigation here." I go, I got, they're going to give us over paperwork that's going to fill, you know, all the grand jury stuff that's going to fill my room. Because I got to look into this and so months went by and, you know, he's doing his due diligence on this and, you know, coming to see me three hours down the road. And, um,

so what's going on with all this? And he said, "Man, they've got all these people. These predicate acts." I go, "What's a predicate act?" And he goes, "All this stuff that you guys did

“wasn't for just the individual." It's because the organization is a corrupt enterprise, right?”

I go, "What about all this old stuff?" He goes, "Well, let me tell you how reco works. There's no statute of limitations when they start the reco investigation on you." So what happened in '94s is just as good as it happened in 2004. And I go, "What do you think the chances are were to jury?" You know, because I didn't know Chris at the time, right? I didn't know we didn't have no relationship. And I go, "What do you think the chances are with the jury?" And he goes, "Well,

it's going to show the jury that you guys have been more on's not for the last year or two, because it's been bad guys for the last 10 years. Continual criminal enterprise. He goes, "I'm well. I don't think we can beat this in a trial." I said, "Okay." And so, "Well, then what do you think and he goes, "Well, they want to sit down with you." And it kind of proved you in a proffer, what they can, what they're going to prove, and what they're going to present against you up there,

you know? And I said, "Oh, man," I said, "You know," and he goes, "He was talking to the U.S. attorney and Chris, my lawyer, was," and he goes, "And they seem pretty cool." "Well, they don't seem like they're trying to knock your head off or get you to go." And he, you know, trials all over and do all that stuff and I said, "Yeah, I can't do that. We're going to put me." Poe Duck, I whole the way. I look in

and that's when they opened up their end and like my lawyer said, he's like, "We're playing cards. They're going to show us their hand. They're going to be honest with us." What they're going to be able to prove. We're getting to see the grand jury stuff who's going to take to stand against you.

“And that's what it was about in there. You know, I got to know Chris from sitting with them,”

seeing he was a good dude. He wasn't coming at me like, you know, swearing at me and all that stuff. He said, "Hey, man, you had a job to do. I had a job to do, and here we are," you know? And I said, "Okay, it was 10 years. It was, they didn't want nothing further. They just wanted

the guys that all of us here, basically, we all pledged to our own charges, right? So we saved them

a trial. We saved ourselves from trial because none of us were beat in that trial. All she had to do is get the phone guilty under Rico of one predicate act and that really cinches the Rico in. So, you know, and I had a criminal history. I was to the state join already. I was to the Fed joint right back to back with the state. And now I was home for four years. So my criminal history was high up on the federal guidelines because the top of the guideline book is your criminal

history and the side is your offense level. So if I would have, you know, he manned up and told him,

“screw you guys, you guys are taking me to trial and lost the trial. I was sitting in 20 year marks”

somewhere at 85%. Yeah. So that's when I said, I said, "Let me come in and I can clean up my end on this, right? Without hurting anybody, without doing anything to my code defendants and making anybody." You know, I say this. Not one person in that club had a spend a dime to call a lawyer for any for what us three did or said that stopped with us. The RECOM indictment was four guys and ended there with us and everybody pled guilty to their own individual charges on the Rico.

So, where we've seen some cases on Rico cases where guys flipped and then they had superseding indictments where they brought three more people in because of what the people said before them,

you know what I mean? And I never wanted to go that way. I didn't want to hurt the three guys

that I was there with and I knew vice versa that they didn't want to hurt me either. So, you know, so when I had the chance to sit down and said, "Okay, and I didn't have to. We could have sat down with them. I wasn't given them nothing up that they didn't know. They had to hold indictment there." And if we didn't like the way it was going, we would have just backed out and said, "Hey, where are you going to take you to trial? Or I'm going to go plead to the judge just on my own,

plead guilty." So, Chris was always a gentleman to me sitting in them for offers. You know, it was always cool and it was all done and over with when we got, I got sentenced and was had not depressed and I thanked him in the U.S. attorney. U.S. attorney was by the name of

“Tate Chambers and we lost Tate, I think, about five or six years ago he passed, I believe,”

to some cancer. And he was a good dude to me in there. You know, if they were in the room, point and everything at me and swearing at me and screaming at me and we're doing all this, you can imagine how a brace of that would have been. I would have been like, take me back to myself. But Chris and Tate, they were super great. My lawyer liked them and we liked the outcome of it all.

You know, and that was always what I wanted to do. I wanted to make sure I wasn't hurt and

nobody else. I didn't want nobody else to suffer over me or hey, you can get four more years off your sons. If you do this, I just didn't want to live with that. You know, and they made it very easy for us to take our lumps and plead guilty to what they had us on. So it was a win for the government. You know, I was already out of the club when I got re-code. I left because, you know, I what happened was, I'll rewind it. In 98, I went away to the state penitentiary. I beat up a

guy real bad that was beating up an ex-girlfriend of mine that I was very good friends with her and her family still. The only reason that I broke that me and Kendall broke up with each other is because Kendall wanted more time out of me. I was with her for a couple of years. She knew about the other girls. They all knew about each other. Kendall wanted some more time and I said, "Kend like, can't give you no more time. I got the all I was trying to knock my head off the shoulders. The

fed boys are trying to put me in the penitentiary for a life. I can't give you no more." So on that note, let's just remain friends. I love you. I love your mom and dad. They owned a big bar in our neighborhood where we're all hung out. Five o'clock in the morning, joined Sean every, hoodlum and every street person was in this place, but it was a happen in joint. And I said, choose your next dude wisely, please. You know, I love you, man, but we got a part of our ways.

Well, she got mad at me and she ended up dating this guy and the guy, you know, at the time, just was a jealous guy and then put in his hands on her. You know, she was a good-looking girl. He got jealous of the people that knew her and kissed her on the cheek and stuff like that. So was he a biker? No. Just the street dude. There were a couple years younger than me.

came and told me that this was happening. And I didn't believe it at first because I was like,

there's no way that Kendall's gonna let this dude put his hands on her. Her dad was a former Marine. And I mean, I'm a Marine, you know, celebrating the birthday every year at his bar. I mean, you know, and there's no way that she would let that happen. Well, it was a true thing was happening. So, um, once we dug a little deeper into it and found out, you know, I wasn't too happy with that. So, I get into a house where he was at and uh, did a little work in that house as I like to,

it's a very unique story. And me and him have a relationship these days. It's really bizarre,

Sean, but the way it turned into. And um, so we got caught in the house.

Cops came in. Swat team came in. Can you want to talk about what happened to the house?

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Or enter Srs to get 30% off your first subscription order. That's armra.com/srs. I'd like to say I'd like to keep it this way. He got beat up in that house pretty severely through some duct tape and some stuff like that. His friend got away. He came in the house with a friend. The friend got out ran to the local 7/11. It was really cold out. It was December 16th.

“You never forget the day you got arrested. And it was freezing cold. 10/20 degrees. You know,”

freezing cold up. And there were some cops in the 7/11. And then guy said, "Mell chance in the Hell's Angels got my friend kidnapped in the house." And we didn't know that the guy was gone like that. And I was getting busy with them in the house. Why the fellows were packing up some of her stuff and getting some clothes together? And you know, wasn't till we were ready to leave the house. And I told one of the fellows go warm the car up so we can, you know, get these guys out of here.

And he came running back in. And we looked out the police, like look outside. And we looked outside in the whole street. It was just lit up. It was about 10 o'clock at night, pitched dark. They had spotlights on and everything. They had the spot team there. And we were just hit now. They knew we were in the house. So after that, when they came in and kicked the doors, and they took him away from us, right? Got him in stuff, locked us all up, you know, brought us, you know, locked us up,

brought us to the local, their local freezing. And, you know, we all said, "I'm gonna get our lawyers and stuff." So about one, about one, 32 o'clock in the morning hours later, I'm in one of the lockups that, you know, were all separated, my two other guys, Pelzaine is in the house with me. There was three of us. They're all in different, you know, lockups spots, you know. And I hear my name, "Mell." And I kind of wake up, I'm freezing shomely and it's metal thing. I got my, my hoodie

“wrapped over me like a blanket. And I think I'm dreaming and I hear candles of”

voice, and she goes, "No, and I go candle." And she goes, "Yeah, and I jump up, I go, what are you doing?" Here, she goes, "They came and got me from, from my dad, from Georgia's house. They came and got me and locked me up. They're charging me with everything they're charging you guys with." And I said, "Ah." I said, "Chandle, I'm sorry." I said, "But it'll work out for you. They can't, you weren't at that house. They can't charge you with this. Like you would like we masterminded this

through her." You know. So we went that morning time and got in front of a judge. December 17th and uh, heard all the charges attempted murder, kidnapping, home invasion. The least one being an aggravated battery, right? And uh, no bond, immediately, no bond.

cook county, the county jail, no no bond. So our lawyers get up there and they say, "You're on or, you know, they said, "Well, the judge goes, "Well, they, they've found guns in the house. They've found ski masks and everything." And her lawyers says, "I'm guns. We're nothing to do with, you know, my clients. I'm guns were in the house. They were the guys." You know, her boyfriend at the time, you know. So the judge said, "Well, we're going to run the state wants to run fingerprints on them.

If they're fingerprints, don't come back on the gun. Then we'll get these guys back in here." So they set the court date for Christmas Eve December 24th to go back in front of this judge. Now to see what our, where if our fingerprints came on, all this stuff that they found in the house,

“no fingerprints on the guns, of course, right? So the set us a bond, a high bond. I think I needed”

50 or 60 K to get out. Fellows were right around their 30 or 40 K like that. So we all get out Christmas morning. This is Christmas Eve. Our treasurer comes, gives them money to the state. We all get out Christmas morning like, I don't know, six, seven o'clock in the morning. So we fought this case from the street for 14 months. We were all home with our attorneys and stuff, and fighting this case from the street for 14 months before we ended up getting the four-year

sentence that we got. We got found guilty on the attempted murder, the kidnapping, the home invasion, because there was her dad's house that they were renting. He let us in. And we got found guilty of aggravated battery with a weapon, being a baseball bat and some pliers, pliers. So that was my first time going to the penitentiary. It was kind of funny because

I used to always say that to the fellows, you know, like we're going to end up in two spots,

the tombstone, or the penitentiary. And as now as I'm walking through these penitentiaries, I was like, boy, this socks, lost my freedom, right? And it wasn't cool with losing my freedom. My guy like me, I was active. I was all over the place, right? You know, I was very out and about and the women and the, you know, being that social guy. So I say, you know, losing my freedom,

“that first time in my eyes on things, you know. So that's why I was able to go back to sand.”

When I was in that state, penitentiary, the feds indicted me. I don't know, something they called male fraud. I had given up when I had an Iraq Z-28 at the time. And I had given it to two FBI agents. They gave me two grand for the car. I reported it stolen through all state, pocketed the money. You would, if, if that's all that would have happened, I could have got a mine in treatment, because they brought the crime to me. One of the guys that was a henchman with me back in the

day, he flipped for the government. He got busted by the feds for all this drug dealing in guns. And unbeknownst to us, we didn't know it. They kept them on the street. And I was the target. So they were trying to get this guy to get me in there, to do to sell them guns, to sell them drugs, to do a murder for hire, which none of them I wanted, no part of. And they were posing as mobsters from St. Louis. I didn't know. I was doing some research on them with some mobsters. I knew from Chicago.

And nobody knew him. But I didn't think that my guy was bad. I trusted my guy. And I said, "Well, you sell them the guns and the drugs. You've got the same shit. Go ahead. I don't need the money. You do it, you know?" So he really couldn't get me on anything. Well, they brought me to this warehouse, and they had this warehouse in it. Boats and cars and bikes in their shaw, and you know,

I go, "What do you guys do with all this stuff? Always put them in crates and we send them overseas.

It's all stolen merchandise." And I said, "Really?" They said, "Yeah, Jim was telling us that you got this Iraq as E28. You're trying to sell, right?" And I go, "Yeah, I got about 10 grand of tunes in it.

“It's pretty badass car. I go, but I don't know. But he just seems like they want to buy it, right?”

It's got a lot of stuff on it." And he said, "Well, we'll take it." So what do you do? What did they tell me? What did they do? It will give you two grand. I said, "Okay, that sounds great. Okay." Well, I could have got him on a treadmill, but I brought him some work hours. I furthered the cry, right? As I learned later in life with that meant, you furthered the cry and you brought him two more cars, right? So when I was in the state penitentiary,

the feds came and indicted me on that male frog case. So I left the state penitentiary,

switched handcuffs with the marshals in the Sallyport, and they took me to my first federal prison

13 months, whatever that 85% was on that. So now I had a state conviction and a federal conviction.

“But that is when I came home from that. I had something that they call non-association,”

or I couldn't be around any of the guys. If I walked in a bar and they were there, I had a leave. I walked in a restaurant. I was the one who had to take the responsibility to leave, because I couldn't be around the club. And that gave me that time to really concentrate and figure life out. You know, I wanted, now I wanted to be in my daughter's life. I wanted to be in my mom and dad's life. I wanted to be the guy that I was before I took this journey. So you know,

I gave me that time to reflect in the penitentiaries. And I got back my connection with the Lord.

I was constantly in fellowship with them. I was running a prayer group, a prayer group in the

state and the federal prisons, that breathing the Bible, just getting into the Word. Everything that I wasn't doing before, why did you get into it? You know, when I was in the penitentiaries, and I was thinking to myself, man, how did I get here? I was the least likely dude to become what I became. Coming from the family I came from. I was that least likely dude. My mom and dad's friends were like, we've seen little Melvin on TV. What's going on there? Like they were to

he's running the house angels. And you know, my mind every like, you know. And that's when I really, I had that time away. I got now a mod of the forest. And I can see the trees. And I'm like,

and how is I live in life here? My daughter. I'm not going to be around her. I just did back

to back penitentiaries. How old was your daughter at the time? Let's see. 10, 10 and years old when I went away. Yeah, 10 years old. So, you know, and she would come and I, you know, a couple of times not much because they were crying. And I break my heart and same with my mother and seeing me in a visiting rooms. And I'm watching them cry. It was breaking my heart and knowing that I was okay back behind these walls. I wasn't having any issues back there. You know, and I was protected. I was

good. And there were the ones crying and paying for it. You know, I call home and check in with my mom and dad nightly every night. My dad was sick at the time. He was a bad diabetic. My prayers were that he would hang on until I got home and not pass away, right? And so I saw that was in my mind, Sean, it was all planned. It was like a movie I was watching. And that's when I, I got back sonner and said, all right, Lord, I'm here. I am, but don't let me be a hypocrite. Don't let me

listen to your word. Hear your word. Don't let me fellowship with you right now. If I'm going to be that dude that goes in his distrust and throws everything back and I'm going to go right back to where I'm at.

“You know, you hold my tomorrows. And that's how I used to pray to him and say, you got me from this”

day on, right? And then when I came home, I had the non association, which now I couldn't be around the club. So now I started living my own life again. I had a good friend of mine that owned big nightclubs in the city of Chicago and he said to me, because hey, you need a job. No, don't you? And I go, I need a job, Frankie. And he says, okay, he goes, punch, come work for me. And I said, I don't want to bounce on your floors. That's not what I'm looking to do. And he goes, man,

well, I need you to have a run, put a security team together for me. You know, everybody. We're doing hip-hop nights. We're doing all these different nights. You know, I'm all from the gangster disciple leaders that the vice-lord leaders to the street people. But a team of security guys together. So our nights, he goes, we're making big money. But we're, you know, we're in the city of Chicago. And we have every gangster coming in here, right? And I said, okay, because I just need your presence there.

And I said, okay, so I put some security teams together. And we were all doing our stuff on the floor

“and making sure everything was safe. So now I was living at the whole different lifestyle, right?”

And I think I said this earlier, you know, I'm like, okay, Lord, I'm home. I'm not in the club anymore. I'm not selling drugs, guns, shooting dudes off motorcycles and making all these, you know, violent calls here. Pretty good guy right now. But the womenizing thing just, it advanced itself is crazy. It was, could say now because now I didn't have the club taken up my time. Well, I did just by what? Four years of pros and with no women, right? So now I was like,

yeah, right, bro. Now I was like focused on, you know, my life, making legit money from, you know, from the night clubs and, you know, a whole new array of women of the downtown night clubs scene. So I was right back into the one after the another, which was breaking my mother's heart

when they were teenagers. And here I am, mama's boy, I'll run around with every girl that passes my way. Right? My mom didn't like that to my mom was like, when are you kind of settled down? I used to tell her, mom, you raised me with so much love. I got a pass at around. She hated that show. I just got a show. Did you imagine my old Italian mother? I'm telling her that, right? She's like, she's like, gosh, she gets so mad at me. The rosary beads in her hand.

“So, um, and that was, uh, that's what really made me think about life and, you know,”

spending time with my daughter and reconnected with her and seeing my parents all that time now. And, you know, not being in the club, I still had a motorcycle because I technically was still in the club. I didn't quit the club yet because I couldn't quit. Why I was on non-association. You have, if you're going to leave the club, you have to come in the room and do it. You have to do it the same way you come in. You can't just call up. Hey, I quit the club. Come

and get your stuff. You got a man up and, and, and do it like that. So I was on non-association. The fellows knew they couldn't come and see me. I couldn't come and see them. As much as that, you know, they weren't liking it. And I wasn't liking it. But that was the law. I couldn't if I, you know, they ran me because the recoil wasn't yet. Chris and the crew were still trying to get this recoil indictment on me. So this would have been, they were watching me constantly.

The CFI was around any of the club and I wasn't. And then when I got off my non-association, I quit. I said, you know what? I just, I can't do this no more. And the fellows asked me why and I said, I can't give 100% and if I can't give 100% to something, especially this lifestyle, what's it going to do? It's going to get somebody hurt. It's going to get somebody in trouble. I don't want to be, you know, slipping like that. I'm not into it the way I was

into it no more. My focus is not this no more. My focus is my life and what I want to do with my family and stuff. So they can't make you stay and it's not the mob, you know, or it's, you know,

“you can't get out. If you want to leave the motorcycle clubs, speak them back from my day.”

If you were up to date on your dues and you didn't know the club no money, hand in all your stuff, see it on the road. You're good. You just say, you don't want to be part of the club no more. We can't make you stay if you're forced the guy to stay and then something happens. You go into a gas station and you're filling up your bike and here comes the other team and now a shootout happens. And he didn't want to be there in the first place. Guess where his mind's going. I didn't want to

do this in the first place. Let me talk to these feds. So you know, never want to make a guy stay

and something he didn't want to do, you know. Interesting. Yeah. I would not have expected that. Yeah. What that you can't leave? Yeah. Yeah. No push back. Nothing. I mean, I was close with the fellows. You know, they were a little bit as far as like, come on, bro, what are you doing? Don't, you know, trying to get me to stay. Like I said, the guys used to go over to my mind dad's house

“when I was in the in the joints the first time. They knew I called up every night because every night”

I called the check on my mind dad every night. So my mind said, you know, he's calling about 7 o'clock and 3/4 of them and show up and they passed the phone around. I go, what's going on? Now we're over by moms and like, yeah, they're like reading pasta and meatballs and, you know, my mom was all the Italian made all our food by hand, you know, rolled the road, the sausage out and everything

like that. And I go nice, nice man. They always looked out. The fellows were looking out for my

mind dad and being over there and hanging out, you know. So push back like that that they didn't want me to leave but no push back like you ain't going to go nowhere else. That doesn't happen in that world, you know. Yeah, some guys from some other charters call me up and said, why don't you transfer here and I said, I'm not leaving because I don't like the fellows here. I just can't do this lifestyle number 14 years of my life. 13 years of my life to that. I said, and when I was in that realm,

I was in that realm. I wasn't half doing half as a nothing John, you know, I was down for the cause, whatever it took, you know, I meant that the penitentiary, the tombstone. I was, you know, I wasn't the guy that was like, are you guys going to go do this? I'll see you later. I'll be at the,

I'll be in the spa. I couldn't do that. I was the first one running in the doors. How horrible is

up for it to leave? It was a little hard. I had a lot of good relationships with a lot of guys around the country that, you know, that I had a column up on the phone and say, hey, before you see it on the facts, go out this week. You know, I left the club. I quit the club and they were like, what? A couple of guys like, what come here? Why don't you transfer here? And that's when I said, I'm not leaving because I don't like the fellows. I'm just leaving because I can't give no more

to this life. I can't do it. I'm breaking hearts. My mom and dad, my daughter. It's time for me to focus on my life that I made here. I have to give my daughter my attention now. You know? So a little hard, no one that I wouldn't have them relationships with these guys because when you leave, you leave. You're not around the more. You're the afterthought. They continue the role on,

You know, maybe if you go to a party once a while or see them and stuff like that, but you're not on the everyday call list no more. It's, it's over for you. So, um, but my mind was made up. Well, how did you, I mean, we had talked about, you know, the addiction to adrenaline or, how do you deal with that? How do you get in your fix? You know, after I left with that addiction, I didn't replace it with anything. I don't think Sean. I just really was focusing on my relationship

with my family in the Lord. When I tell you, I, I said, please don't let me be that hypocrite.

You know, even though I was running around the women, I didn't finally, I didn't know about the

full surrender until the recoil. And when I was in the cell, but I was not doing the bad stuff. And I was, you know, fellowship and having that relationship with the Lord and running the night clubs, you know, I was still getting in my fix with the women and stuff. And I was glad to be out of that violence in that turmoil that I created around myself. I was like a relief. When I went to prison that first time, you know, the state and federal prison, it was almost like, it was like a breath of

fresh air because I didn't realize. I didn't think I would stress down the street because I loved it. But it is stressful. No one that the fads are trying to get you right. The, no one the fads are trying to get you knowing the, you know, the, you know, the outlaws wanted me dead in the whole nine yards. Think I was on a new stress, but I was. And when I got in themselves, I was like, man, kind of free for a minute here, you know. So I don't think I was trying to replace it. I was just

trying to live that new life. You know, in, in, in praying that none of the old stuff came back and me. I didn't know what was going to happen in the street now. Everybody knew, you know, that

“I came home and not associations over right before the Rico. It was months. I think I left the club in”

April of 2004, somewhere around there and I got, we got indicted and I believed the summer. So I wasn't gone long, but it was on the street now. Melchwood, the house angel, he's in the longer in the club. I didn't know what anybody else was going to think. I didn't, all of a sudden, I knew the all was didn't love me now. He's a great guy. I know he's on the club. He's still didn't

like me. I always kind of look over my shoulder with that and wonder what was going to happen here.

Even though the truce was on, by the time I got home from prison, that was already getting violated. They were already nitpicking at each other when I came home in that 2001 era. They were starting to go from '97. They were starting to now, not practice the good neighborhood policy no more. The good neighborhood policy and violate some of the stuff that we said we wouldn't do, but now it wasn't my fight no more. I didn't have a horse in the race. One of the leaders called me up and said,

hey, we can't deal with that dude that's the president now in Chicago and I said, I can't help you out in that one. I don't have no ifsans or butts about it. It's not my fight no more. I'm out.

“You have to deal with that guy. I'm out completely. I quit.”

So another by the grace of God, they just left me be. Being in that lifestyle,

there's always the next new hit that's coming. Somebody they're going to be aggravated with.

Somebody's going to get your attention all the time in that life, new club, this that. It's always you're going to get enough fights on their hand. I was okay. Yeah. Damn. Then you went back. Then I went back. Then I went back. Yeah. Then the the Rico came out of that. I mean, how did that come about? So you know, we knew that that it was lurking in the backgrounds through the mirrors, you know, thinking about everything that we did

through that war. You know, we always heard about it, you know. And so now it's the, you know, the months of 2004 to summer of 2004 and a couple of friends called me up and said, hey, we got a subpoena. My buddy with the body shop, my good friend. He said, hey, I got a subpoena. I said for what he said to go down the peoria for a grand jury. Something to do with a Rico case, which you and I said, okay. And I seen him and I said, hey, bro. And then I said, um,

obviously they know that he painted this vehicle and he said, I'm not going to go there and say anything.

“I go, you have to. They already know one of the guys flipped. I knew what's happened and I said,”

if you go and purge yourself, you can end up getting yourself locked up. I put you in that

afford a lawyer for you to know either. So you're going to have to go down in that grand jury and say,

what they know. Don't don't catch yourself lying. And then um, um, a couple months later, and I'll send them more towards the end of 2004. I get a call from a girl that I was one of the

“girls that I was dating out from Rockford. And she calls him out and I go, hey, babe, what's going on?”

She goes, hey, babe. She goes, I just got, uh, the feds just left there. I said what they want. She said, the gave me a subpoena to go down in front of this grand jury in peoria. And go, okay, what's the date on it? She told me the date. And then I said, okay, she goes, I said, I'll, I'll be out there to see you soon. I said, give me about a week. I'm going to come out there and see you. I said, okay, I'm she goes, okay. But 20, 30 minutes later, phone rings.

It's one of my other girlfriends. She goes, hey, I say, babe, what's going on? She goes, uh, the feds just left here. I said what they want? She goes, I got a subpoena to go down in front of a grand jury in peoria. I said, you did, huh? So what's the date on it? She tells me the date on it. I said, okay, I said, I'm going to be to see you. She goes, I'm not telling them anything. I said, I'm going to be down to talk to you. 30 minutes later, now or later, whatever it might have been, get the phone call.

“It's one of my other girlfriends. And I go, hold on. Let me guess. The feds just come and see you.”

She goes, how do you know? It seems to be going around today. It's such a grand jury in peoria. She goes, yeah, what's the date? She tells me the date. I said, okay. So they went and subpoenaed all the girls that I had any dealings with through these years. All at the same time and brought them all down in one room at where they were setting and getting ready to go into the grand jury. So I laugh about it now with Chris because it's so many years later, you know, and laugh about it

and I'm like, man, that was some dirty pool. He'll laugh and he'll tell you tomorrow. Like, he just, he goes, we were dying in there. He goes, the guy you've seen the guys walking by the room and looking in and are like, what is going on in that room? Look at them. They're all stars in there. And he's like, yeah, they're all former strippers. And we should put a stripper pull up in there and stuff like they're all mellow's girlfriends. And you know, so when I had heard that, and then

went and talked to them, I went and seen all them girls. You know, I didn't want to get on the phone with them and seen all the girls. And I'd called my attorney up and my good dear friend PJ was telling you about it. And I said, listen, this is what they just did. And he goes, wow, he goes, that doesn't make any sense. He goes, what? And they must be at the bottom of the barrel. If there's a pin in your girlfriends because I know you ain't talking to them out of school. I'm like, listen,

I'm girls know what I have for breakfast. And that's about it. I said, half of them never met any

health angels. I don't bring my stuff home. They don't know any crimes or businesses. I'm not sleeping with them telling them their crimes that we're doing. Girls know nothing about me. And he goes, that's weird. I go, I had to buy them in a barrel here. This is the Rico case. Well, they already had, they knew they were getting the indictment. They just brought these girls down there, right? To rile them all up before they brought them in the room to see if they were going to

be mad because they were all in there looking at each other. Now like, ah, so, you know, we call at the dirty full trick these days. You know, being a crissor laugh about it, right? Didn't, uh, crazy. You know, and I, I talked to them girls all still today. You know, I still remain friends with all of them. You know, a couple. I didn't for a while that were mad at me, the candles and stuff like that. But, uh, you know, I was able to go back in and later in life and say, listen,

I buy a pile. I had apologized to them because it got heavy on my heart, Sean, especially when I came home from the Rico and now I gave the Lord full surrender. You know, I say before I went,

gave him about 70 percent. I wanted to keep my hand on the wheel with the, you know, with the

girls and how I wanted to live life still, right? Then is now the Rico had come, right? You know,

“so they do all that with the girls. Now I know it's common. I remember the conversation with my”

mom and having dinner one day and because they subpoenaed my mom and dad to, they went and subpoenaed my mom and dad because at first they thought I was trying to wander some money through them, right? Because one of the core of that was in my, in my mom's name. One of the bikes was one of the bikes was in another girl's name. I showed some income back then through a, uh, a towing company that I was, uh, doing some, um, like overseeing some, like, a consultant work for,

but, uh, that guy just paid me in the check. I cashed the check and gave it back to him the money. I didn't need his money, but he, he paid the taxes. So I, I showed some legal income, but not enough to wait to facilitate the way I was living, right? So these subpoenaed my mom and dad to go down in front of the grand jury too. So I was at my mom's house talking to my said, yeah, they're going to end up getting this Rico on me kicking my doors and I'm going to set

I see this whole thing coming and my Italian mother being a stern mother and she said,

“you should have known that was coming. I mean, she didn't give me no sympathy like, oh, baby,”

she because you, did you had to know that was coming, son? I said, I know, I know I get it, my gum just aggravated now because I know, uh, when they get this, I'm going to be sitting for a hot minute, right? And, uh, and that's what happened. They ended up kicking my doors in that morning. And, um, like I said, Chris didn't come to my house. The SWAT team came and, uh, we'll laugh at this probably when we get together and to tomorrow. But, um, in the morning, they kicked

the doors and I was with, with, with one of the girlfriends with this girl Kathy. And, uh, you know, we heard the dark dogs barking next to her house at five something in the morning.

I said, baby, your neighbors got dogs. She goes, hey, but they shouldn't be out. And they looked

out the window and see all the black trucks out in front of the house. And I said, ah, and I said, hey, get up, get up. I go or get ready, and she goes, what's that? What's that? Joe, she had no idea because she wasn't with me through the housing of days. This was when I was home from both prison sons and now I'm out of the club. I just started dating her a couple months before that she ran a big hospital. Big, you know, she had a, uh, a busy business woman and

stuff and I met her house. So I said, oh my god, I said, give me something to wear. I didn't have no clothes on. I said, give me something. So I went to the top of her stairs. She had about eight or nine wooden stairs that went down, beautiful, beautiful front wooden door. And I met the top of the stairs and she's down the hallway. And I see all the red dots coming through the side window. They bam, they bust out a side window because she had a big door and there was two class windows.

They bust out the side window. She throws me her robe. You know, she's like a little tiny girl, you know, 105 pounds and she throws me a rope. I couldn't even get in on my forearm, right? I was 300 pounds.

“She throws me a rope. I got the robe in my hand and they're in there. Drop, what's in your hand?”

Drop, what's in your hand? I said, it's a robe. They said, drop, what's in, I said, a drop, it's in the hand, right? Something can't be open up the door. Hurry up open up the door. I do one. I'm the smash the door and add her nice house, right? So she flies down the stairs. She's got that robe in her hand. She's naked. She opens up the door. We laugh because all the agents told Chris, well, she was a superstar, right? They got to see that body. And she opens up the door. They grab her out.

So they're all at the bottom of the stairs. Gunned up. It's pitch dark. There's a night late on behind me, but it's just dark, right? Dark outside. I got my hands up in the air. I said, I'm on arm. There's no weapons in this house. It's just me and Kathy in this house. We're good, you know? They said, turn around, turn around. So I turn around. They said, clap your hands together like this. Put your hands behind your head, put your head like that. I said, okay. They said, walk backwards down

the stairs and I said, oh, no, no, no, no. I'm not doing that. I said, I'm going to end up breaking

“my neck. I'm going to fall down these stairs. Be in that big. I couldn't move like that, right?”

I said, I'm going to kneel at the top of the stairs. I note that the top of the stairs kept my hands like this and it felt like an eternity to where anybody came up and, like, through the cuff saw me. You felt like an eternity to him thinking to myself, are these? What is going on? Are they going to come get me? Well, come to find out later. Chris tells me when we got to know each other. All of them dudes got a case of homophobia. Nobody wanted to come up and throw some cuff

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I'm not fucking doing it. Yeah, we're not doing it, right? So we laugh about that, right? And he told me that the guys told them they're like, man, he looked like King Kong up there. They're like he

was all this muscle standing there, they're like mad. It looked crazy and they're like he was naked.

“You know, so they finally come and got me, you know, brought me, put me on the couch, hand cuffed”

me and stuff and the guy goes, hey, you got some clothes here and I said, yeah, I'm just going the bedroom, you know, and there's some clothes in the closet. You'll see my clothes on the floor. So he got me some clothes and let me put some clothes on and stuff and Kathy was outside and and they said, hey, you mind if we search the house and I said, let me ask you a question, I said, do you got a warrant for me? Or do you got a warrant for the house? And they said, we got a body

warrant for you. I said, okay, uh, uh, there's nothing here but I don't want you to search her house. I said, what is this for? And they said, it's for the Reco indictment. We're taking it down to Piori and I said, okay, can you get me out of here as quick as you can? I said because I don't want her neighbors getting up and seeing all this. She's a business woman. She had nothing to do with this when I was back in the day. I don't want to embarrass her in this neighborhood like this. You know,

can you guys get me on here fast and they said, yeah, okay, come on. They brought her back in the house and let me give her a kiss goodbye and I told her I whispered in her, I said, go, go, call my mother and I said, and let my mom know what's going on. She was close with my mom. I said, go, go to my mom's, let my mom know what's going on. And that morning, my daughter was meeting me for breakfast. So now my daughter's 16, 17 years old and I made a promise to my daughter Danielle that

I was never going back to the penitentiary. I said, dude, I'm not going back. I'm changing my life.

I'm done with this club stuff. I'm done with the missed deeds I was doing. I never blamed the club from my stuff. That was me. I was the individual. Nobody held my put a gun to my head to do all that stuff, right? I said, I'm not going back. Change my life. I'm going to we're going to concentrate and be a family. So she was meeting me that morning at our favorite breakfast spot and she was there because now they got me out of there. Well, they couldn't, we had a three hour ride to Peoria. They didn't

like Kathy go right away. They kept her in the house until the sunset came up and everything like that. So now my daughter's at the breakfast place at 8 a.m. Kathy goes to my mom's house and my mom calls

“my daughter up and says, Danielle, you need to get over to the house. She goes, I'm going to meet my”

dad. My dad's getting ready to walk in from breakfast and she's like, they came and took your dad.

So that was, that was a heartbreaking thing there. You know, and when I talked to her on a phone, I called later that night after we got a rain and she was at the house and I talked to her on a phone and I said, Danielle, and she said, Dad, you told me. And I said, I know I told you. I said, but this is for the past. I didn't have been no new crimes. I said, this is all from the past. I said, let my last predicate act on this recon indictment was 1998. And you know, I saw,

I'm I'm paying for the past, Danielle. I said, but I promise you, I'm going to come home one day and this is all behind me and I explained it to her. Like I'm paying my penance for the past, you know, and we're like this to this day. You know what I mean? But that was the hardest thing to tell her that, you know, you promised me to have, yeah, that hit hardest with me. So, you know, now it's it's great because I got two grand grills from her and, you know, and we're, where his tightest

could be. My daughter is a big believer and she's out here in Tennessee and I just have a great real her and my wife Melissa and, you know, it's just we have the best relationship with that. So I just thank God for that. And that was my cleansing. John, that was the, that was me given that full surrender. I'm telling you, when, when, after we got that in a diamond and there's no bond and now it's February of 2005, I'm sitting in this cold cell, you know, and the Marshall still are

believing that, you know, I'm the house angel leader, even normal out of the club, and they all as they know is what they know, right? And just like when the, when the SWAT team came in, they came in, you know, they were all pumped up, sitting in the local precinct for the previous three hours coming in to get me thinking that they might have a shootout, right? So everybody was still thinking I was that old guy, you know, and I remember just getting down on my knees and that cell and I was like, okay,

Lord, thought this was all behind me. I thought, you know, me and you were head to this relationship

“going on and I said, but I felt this heaviness on my heart and that's what came up on my heart,”

the women, and I said, okay, I see, I didn't give you that full surrender. It goes, when I told him, take the wheel of my life, I'm going to sit in the passenger seat, while I sat in the passenger seat, but every once in a while I grabbed the wheel and I wanted to run back to the strip clubs and all the women again. Christ doesn't go in there with me, right? And so he was thinking, you want the wheel, take the wheel. So in that cell is where I really felt him speak to him,

told him. I don't know what I'm looking at 20 plus years if things don't go right, but I'm dependent on you, and I'm going to give you full surrender. And that women thing kept coming up on my heart, and I said, I'm done when I come home, you are guiding my life from that point on, and I got so deep into the word down. Even though I was into the word before, now I was into it with a clarity. I was understanding what the word meant, because now I was given in my heart. I

wasn't saying, get me out here tomorrow, Lord. I didn't get the keys the next day. I ended up doing

“that 49 months, right? But in total peace, I remember I was taken in an app, and one of the”

cellies I had before, before I even pled. You know, this is probably six, seven months into it.

I didn't plead late. I didn't plead. It was ahead of me 14, 15 months, so we finally all pled.

You know, we were just looking over the case and sitting down with our attorneys. You know, the feds take their time. In the cellies said to me, man, "Wow, that's some peace, huh?" And I go, "Do you talk, anybody was sure?" "Able to take an apps and relax, and you're looking at this recoil trial, or at this recoil case you got going on?" I told him, "Yeah, I'm just giving it up to the Lord, man." I used to pray and say, "Lord, whatever you need me to do, I'm here."

You know, if you don't need me here for 20 years, eating ramen noodles and honey buns, I would appreciate that, but you're well, and I'm here, and I'm okay with it. And I had a piece that was just deep-shawn. It was deep in me. I was peaceful. Not to say that I didn't have no days where, you know, I was, you know, looking at this. I mean, my lawyer went through some ups and downs with me. You know, there was a couple of times he came to see me and I was like, "F these guys,

I'm tired of it. Am I criminalist? I'm not pleading guilty and they're going to give me 18 years anyways. Just true dad, we might as well go to trial and I would get, you know, they'd hate my lawyer to talk to me off the ledge. Relax, relax, you know. So I didn't just, you know,

wasn't just they flipped the switch. I got the key the next day. I battled it. But I always

came back to the Lord and said, "You got me, you got me on this, you got me on this." And then, you know, once I pledged and got the time and then I was off to the federal penitentaries. I was doing some Bible studies with some hardcore dudes in there that told me to my face we would have never walked into a Bible study and it's just talked about the Lord if it wasn't for you, Mel. I mean, some hard dudes came in there because they said, "We wanted to know why

“you walk around here, smile and peaceful." That's what got their attention, that's what got their”

attention. They said, "You always talking about the Lord and what the Lord did in your life, then we got the hair what kind of dude you were because you know when you're in a federal penitentaries just guys from all over the United States and they're all over." And some of them got there, some old Mel stories, some road stories, and they're like, "Wait a minute, this dude that's in here right now, that dude you're telling me about's in here running a Bible study." Well, he wasn't back

in the day, boys. He is now and then they'd come and talk to me, "Hey, so and so when my guy's knew you from the street or was in this club or this mobster knew you from this and said, "You are not a good dude." I said, "Well, here's where I am and it's only by the grace of God that I am able to be here and doing this and it was only by his grace that he protected me through all that. How come I'm not a tombstone on somebody's chest or arm?" You know, I was the poster

“child to that lifestyle, right? I shouldn't be here with you. I think about that all the time.”

Especially when I'm, you know, my wife reminds me about a lot of stuff, you know, I'll be in traffic and we'll be in Florida and I'll be like, "Oh, the snowbirds are here. It's traffic sucks." And she's like, "Yeah, Pete's sitting in an 8x10, right?" And I'm like, if Pete's sitting in an 8x10, I keep my federal ID in one of my, one of my drawers in my kitchen, whenever I'm not grateful, I look at that. You can say, "Thank you, Lord." You know,

how was it reconnected with your daughter? How long were you at there? How old was I? How long were you in? Was it four years? Yeah, it was 49 months. 49 months, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, about four years. Yeah, it just shy of it.

So, then reconnecting with her, you know, I always talk to her in there when I went off the federal

prison. I didn't want nobody to come into see me. I just wanted to do that time. It wasn't close to home. I just was like, I just, I'll talk to everybody on the phone. Now, much later in life, my dad was very sick as a diabetic. He was sick. And my mom used to tell me, she's like, you know, pap is not doing good. And I'd say, "I know, and I'd pray, Lord, please, please let me come home."

I was dappled with my dad's eye, baseball coach. You know, even though I was doing what I was doing, he still loved me. He still loved the fellows. The fellows that I'll come over and see my parents. I told you, he loved all the fellows individually. They just didn't like what we were about. And, um, that was my prayer. And I, I made it home in my dad passed eight months later. So, my dad got to see that life change because when I came home, I said, okay, I'm done.

Everything that I committed, crying, they got me further. There's no skeletons. There's nothing I can't

talk about. I paid the penance. I'm done. I'm never going back to that lifestyle. I'm getting

“on, on my way, you know, the only thing that I wish could happen. I wish my dad could have met”

Melissa. I know why. Because my mom got to, because my dad passed an oate. And I moved Melissa from Florida to Chicago in 2009. I made her come up there because my dad passed and I was back living in the childhood home I had. Are you serious? Yes. Wow. So, my dad passed Sean in my mom's with my dad forever. Since they've been kids. And now my mom was afraid to stay in the house because she's never been alone. And I said, well, I wasn't with Melissa. I was with

another girl. I was dating. You know, when I came home from the Rico and I said, sure, her name was Leslie and I said, listen, I got to go back and I'm going back in a movie with my mother. So, I was the 41 year old dude living in my mom's basement that I grew up in, but with a career, you know, I was already running all the nightclips stuff, you know. But I told my mom, I'm not going to let you stay alone in this house. You know, I'm going to stay in this house with you.

“So, when I met Melissa and then I told her, if you want to be in a relationship with me,”

you have to move the Chicago and her mom and dad were in Florida. I said, I can't move down here. And my mom's not moving down here. And I'm not leaving my mom. My mom and dad took care of me. The whole time I was in the pen of the country. You know, physically, you know, financially, I didn't need that when I was in there. I still had some money. I said, but they were there with me my whole life. And I'm not leaving my mom alone. I'm staying with my mom in the house, you know.

So, you know, I was blessed to see. So, my mom, of course, you know, got to meet Melissa and O9 and then my mom passed in 2019. They were best of friends. Melissa, we moved my mom to Florida in 2015. Yes, she was there for years to 2015. We moved her to Florida. And that girl out there took care of my mother like it was her own, you know. And at the end, you know, my mom's health started fading out on her and stuff like that. And then she just passed,

you know, the Lord baby to her home, I say all the time, Shanka, she was such a believer, such a believer. And love the Lord. So, you know, it was blessed that I got that time, but yeah, that was my prayer when I was away just to get home. So, reconnecting after I came home from the Riko and I had my dad and my mom, I had my daughter who's now older and my daughter had

birth to my first grand baby, Michaela, two or three months before I came home.

And I got a funny story. So, when my daughter was got pregnant by the guy she was with, who, you know, I knew who he was and from, you know, and they've been together. They were together, like from the time they were 15 or 16. Now, she was like 20. My dear friend, Jamie, was bringing her down to see me in this facility. I was about two, two hours from the house. So, she drops it to Jamie as we're going down or she goes, Jamie, I got to tell you something.

She goes, I'm pregnant. And she goes and I'm going to tell my dad today and he goes, what? He pulls the car over to the side of the road. Jamie goes, I pulled the car over to the side and said, you're going to tell him when you're with me. It's like my dear friend. And she goes, yeah, I'm going to tell him today because I get to sit in the room when I'm in the visiting room and he goes, oh, Lord, he goes, he's going to have loose his shit in there.

And she goes, well, who better to be with the new uncle, Jamie? He's like, oh, man, he goes, I was praying all the way there, Mel. You know, so she told me in the visiting in the room, they had a little room set up, it was just me, her and Jamie. And of course, I did at first. I'm like, what? So what are you thinking? I said, I'm here locked up. I can't help you. How are you thinking? You know, and you know, then took me a minute to think like, okay,

to say in a bad thing here. So I came home and my oldest granddaughter was just a few months old and so I'm home fresh home and I have a new little grand baby that I have a new vision for

“and I just became the apple of mine. I remember my daughter saying, geez, Dad, you weren't like this”

with me and I'm like, yeah, I look what your dad was doing when you were foreign and you were that age. By the time you were five, I was already gone doing all this stuff. Your dad wanted to be a gangster,

I guess, right? So, you know, and it's just amazing now. I said, I got them two grand babies

19 and soon to be 12 and the apple of my eye. So, you know, coming home and reconnecting and doing

Rico and my buddy had all the night clubs and he said, no, you're coming back home and I said, yeah, I'm coming back home. I don't know what else to do. What am I going to do? Now I'm older. I'm going to go poor concrete and, you know, my body's aching a little bit as a molder. Now,

“you know, I was 41. I think when I came over there, 41 when I came home from the Rico,”

I said, I'll be down there Frankie and I went down there and did the same thing, had the security team and did that, you know, for the next few years, you know, I think I got out of that, like 2012. We moved up Florida in 2014, but 2012 I just couldn't take them late night hours, no more Sean, you know, and I was like, I'm done with this stuff, you know, and went to Florida and, you know, as you know, I hooked up with a gentleman by the name of Jim Manion, who owns the high FBB,

the NPC, the body building federation. I hooked up with Jim. I met him when I came home. I met him in '09. I knew of him. Of course, right? I was a body building fan flip in the magazines and Jim went

in the federation and I always looked up to the, to the gut to Dorian Yates, and the Branch Warrens,

and the Lee Haney's, and stuff like that, the Mr. Olympia isn't met a dear friend of mine. Now, Steve Weinberg, who owns cabbage Jim, he's one of our head judges for the federation, and just got close to these guys, talking to these guys, and didn't want to job out of him, didn't want anything out of him, just it was a great, great to meet him, and we just connected and stayed in touch with each other. Jim's and Pittsburgh's thieves in Long Island, I was in Chicago,

“and that's how I got to ended up putting up with Jim and to start working for him. And once”

I moved to Florida in 2014, and he said, "I want you to come aboard with us, man, now we all,

we love you, we get along with you, and we're all dear friends, and and gave me my first

sanction to throw my first body building show." Which now we have three, me and the wife have three, April August, in December. We just had the, we said our April 4 show over the Easter weekend, so that's how I got into the IFBB in the NPC, and in my first really legal, legal career jobs, as I say, you know? We say it was, I waited until I was 40 to get my first credit card in my first job. That's wild. Wild. I mean, so what, what is, when you say,

completely surrendered, let Jesus take the wheel, I mean, what does that mean? Glad you asked that, because you know, me following you, and I'm, you know, there's no coincidence that I'm here, and we're going to talk about that, you know, and I, you know, the podcast, you know, you're the one that I said, I'd love the band Shawn show, and of course the military, you know, as we get into, but what I do with core medical, and what we do, we love our military.

You mean a believer, and watching the people that you have coming on the show, and seeing them talking to you, and I see how deep you are. I watch you ask these questions, you know, I see some podcast people, and you know, you almost got an, and I don't even seem like they're following them for the conversation, but you go, wow, wait a minute, tell me, and I'm watching that, you know, and I, I, I see that, and that full surrender is, for me was, not asking for things my way,

not worrying about what's happened in tomorrow, just know that I'm in the moment, and you, and you have me, Lord, I'm giving you that full surrender. I'm going to know your word, the Bible that you left us, the word that you left us with, that is the truth of life. I want to know that, and I'm not going to go say, you know what, Lord, I want to go run and do this. I want to go do this career. I want to do this career. I pray on everything.

I mean, I don't pray on what meals I'm having for the day, but I pray on everything. This was a right fit for the show. I prayed on before I said yes to, with, with Wayne doing the movie.

“Where does your answer come? How do they come to you?”

On my heart, I don't give you an example. Talking about the movie thing. So I come home from prison. It's around 2010. I get a call from a book company, publishing company. Hey Mal, we want to do a, your life story in a book. Oh, you do, huh? Yeah. $100,000 signing bonus. $2 a book. Make this thing a busseller, boom, boom. Okay. Let me pray on it. Let me think about it and get back to you guys. Pray on it. Pray on it. No interest, Sean. Nothing even sparking me. I didn't want to call him back.

Wasn't for the wife. I wouldn't even return the phone calls, but she's like, "Babe, give him a phone call and tell him no other call in the op, you know?" So I said, "Okay." So stuff like that. I was praying on that,

and it was never coming back up upon my heart to where it came to fruition.

seek first the kingdom, and all will fall into place. If you're seeking, if you're seeking with

“the an open heart, it was just the right thing to do for me. Next year, a book company again.”

Want to do your life story. Okay. Let them fly in and see what they're talking about. Okay. I'll let the fly in and see what they're talking about. I'm praying on a praying on it. I have no interest in it, but I let the team come down to Florida to see if I was interested. What do they want to talk about? They don't care about the redemption. They don't care about my walk with the Lord. They just want to talk about all the bike or stuff. So that was very easy.

As soon as they told me all that, I said, "We're good, guys." Wasn't interested in doing this, anyway. Sorry. I wasted your trip in, but we're good. Oh, well, that's not, not an or good. Too late now. You got me not interested, right? So that is what I went, "How I know," he speaks to me. I pray and everything. You know, and you know, it just, I feel it. I feel it. He doesn't

“come in. I don't hear him say, "Well, Mel." You know, his voice don't come. He's not burning in a bush.”

He just put it on my heart. He brings, you know, he opens the doors for me and tells me, "Hey, this is a fit for you. I want you to go here. I'm praying on it." Okay. You know, just like when you know, when I hooked up with with what's said, who you met, you know, who gave you the gun, you know, and I didn't want it really job at the time then, either. You know, this was 2018. I was already doing my bodybuilding stuff and I was content with that income. I was living nice. I was in Florida,

but I prayed on it. I said, "Okay, Lord, if this is where you ought to be. If this is a fit, then you'll make it happen. I won't have to go to. I won't have to push through it. I won't have to try to put the wrong ball into the square pack. You know, you'll make it happen. And boy, he did. And not only did I gain a partner out of it. I gained a little brother out of the deal and a family.

“You know, so that's what I tell everybody. I pray and everything. People go everything. I said,”

"No, not when I'm having for breakfast and not what's sandwich I just ordered." But I pray and anything that has some substance, you know, the movie deal, the bodybuilding career, you know, where I'm at in life. I pray at it all. I'm sitting here right now. You know, who this my prayer is for this show, that people would see me and you here together. And you know, as two believers and two followers of Christ and that people would see from my story that nobody's too far gone from the love of

our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ because Jesus, look where I was. I mean, Christ couldn't fellowship with me back in them days. He had a turn away from me when I was doing all that. He can't be part of that and live in that sinful life. I was running around. But he got me. He got my attention. And if he can do it for someone like me, that was running that gamut. You know, I talked a lot of

people in life, a lot of first responders, a lot of military people and stuff and people will say

man, no. What a life you lived on. I'm like, yeah, but look at what God did for my life. I wasn't calling out to him. I wasn't saying forgive me, Lord, for all this bad stuff I'm doing. I couldn't wait to go do more bad stuff. You know, so that full surrender is I truly understand what that means. And I don't make a move without being in prayer and letting him guide me first and look how it worked out. If I would have did them books back in the day, we wouldn't be talking

about a movie story right now. Because the story would have been told in that by Dwayne Johnson and John Burnthal and seven book productions, they would have been told already. And, you know, maybe somebody would have jumped on that book offer in that money, you know, 100 grand to a guy like me as a lot of money. But I just, it wasn't on my heart and I don't do anything that I don't feel as far as what can I pray on, you know, pray down my marriage. You know, this is the right girl

for me. And, boy, 16 years later, I'm lucky. I can breathe there without it. I mean, I don't know where we bank. I don't know what's in the bank. That's the truth, John. She does it all. I know that this card in my pocket works when I go to a lunch. You know what I mean? I know, you know, but I don't let, she runs everything. My body, building stuff. I show up and do what I do. She runs everything from, you know, setting up the convention centers to the, to the athletes' check

ends, to the metals, to the, all that the stage isn't everything. Little Mel does all that. I just do what I do. So, you know, I, I, I prayed on it. I know she's part of the team,

the Lord brought me an amazing woman in my life. And I'm very thankful, grateful.

You know, I don't take that for granted at all. You know, and if I do, I told you what I do, I get either her, not can be in the head, or I remember them, that may pythons. You know,

former, people in the Biker community, Biker gang, one percent community that are reaching out to you.

“Yeah, about coming to Jesus. Yeah, Sean, it's, it's how's that feel? It feels amazing.”

After they seen me on John Perthel a few years ago and telling the story, you know, I started getting these DMs. And I would look at the person's page. And I was like, kind of, guys, got a vest on from this club from this club. He's still active. And then we would DM a little bit. And I would say to them, you know, so too much to DM. Here, here's my number. Give me a call and they give me a call. And I'll talk to them. And one of the guys, and I convention his name, he was a former

pagan sergeant of arms for the pagan back in the day for the pagans, tough dude. It's like my brother these days as his name is Tony. And he was, you know, a non-believer, Sean, a non-believer, and was scrolling through YouTube. But love is John as an actor and sees John and he goes from Hell's Henshin to Hell's Angels to God. And he sees me on the thing and he goes, ah,

“I'm not watching this idiot, you know, he's a former, you know what I'm saying?”

Our former enemy, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, he was from Pennsylvania. I didn't know personally, but them clubs didn't get along. Hell wasn't, or the Hell's Angels in the pagans. Doesn't watch it. It says a couple days later, pops up in his feet again. He's like two hours and 30 minutes, not watching this thing for two hours and 30 minutes beat it, right? Kicked it, kicked it to the curb again. When 90 City woke up, two, three o'clock in the

morning, popped up on his feet. So let me see what this boat was talking about. And he said, "Is he watching it?" He said, "I couldn't stop it and put it down, Mel." He said, "Nol, it's sudden I feel this thing coming out of my eye that I didn't know what it was. It was a terror. It's dude didn't cry. He goes, and I'm like, listen, and to you talk about the Lord and he goes, and I felt like somebody was standing on my chest,

and then he reached out to me, Sean, in a DM, on Facebook. He told me that he watched my thing, and he told me who he was, and he said, "You know, I don't know what to take of this." And I said, "Well, Tony, here's my number. Give me a call, and we started talking,

and fellowshiping with each other, and gave his life to Christ. He's an amazing member of the

John 316 devotional team, and I mean a strong believer. And I told him, "I said, Tony, I'm definitely going to talk about you on this podcast," which Sean, because it's just by the grace of God that me and you are in each other's life. He's been at my house, sleeping in my house. I mean, a little mouth there, you know, and just hanging out, you know, and the first time he came, and he's a big dude, and Melissa says, "Are we okay? Baby, you didn't want to put him up at a

hotel?" I said, "No, I want him to stay here." I said, "I've been talking to this guy for a year, already, on the phone." The Lord's directing him here, he's going to stay here. It's like a brother to us, no? That's awesome. It's one example. So, you know, I know that they're not coming for the attraction for me, or hey, we like the students here or whatever, they're getting led by the spirit, and they hear my story, and something's touching them to touch a guy like

that, deep down like that, you know? And, you know, it's just so cool to see, and now all these years later, I see every walk of life that reaches out to me, and says, "Hey, we've seen this podcast, or we've seen you on the, you know, with the core medical podcast, and we heard you're always

talking about the Lord, your faith is always out there, first and foremost." So, I'm not

ashamed of my faith, and I'm never going to hide it. No matter where I'm at, you know, and then people are like, "Man, we want to know that. We want to become a strong believer." Uncle back to Terry Bollyah, Hulk Hogan. The reason that he asked me to do that at that time, because he wasn't in that spot at that time. Yeah, you've seen he got baptized. You've seen him on Joe Rogan and he wore one of these shirts here, but that was later.

Six years ago, when he asked me to read that Jesus calling, he was still running around in the Hollywood scene in the limelight. Even though he believed in the Lord, he was like, "It's not for me to put out. You know, some people don't want to put that out." And that's where he was at at that time.

“And that's why he asked me to do it, and I did it, and you know, he wasn't there.”

But through the mirrors of being him, being tight, and fellowshiping with each other,

and he used to always say, "What do you mean, Mel, they'll know you buy your fruits?"

"Well, I know you 30 something years. I know when you when you at the worst of the worst.

“Use to come and come and see us in the wrestling matches, and what your best done in 300 pounds,”

and I'm due just to be like, "Damn, Terry. That guy's the real deal, huh?" and Terry goes, "Is the real deal, boys?" Put his and my friend. And we're very close. And Mel's a gentleman, and I'd leave him with my kids, but on the flip side of the coin, Mel's out doing what he does. So I watched his faith grow, to where he got baptized, and then he was in a shamed of his faith no more.

Now he's ordered the John 360, the volitional team T-shirts. He goes on Joe Rogan. I didn't know he was going on Joe. I was busy. I didn't talk to him for like 10 days,

because I was running around and getting busy with work. And I get a call from some people,

and they're like, "Do you see this episode?" And I said, "No," and they show me the things,

“and the shirt, and they talk about him, and the show, and when I wrote around the ring,”

with the Hells Angels, when we came right and around the ring, and stuff like that, with him and stuff, and here he is talking to Joe about his belief. And I'm sitting back watching Joe, who I don't know, who I know he wasn't a believer back in the day, right? You know, and watching him talk to Terry about their beliefs, and I'm watching Terry put it out there. Didn't he tell me about this full surrender? And I watched the mean, violent guy

go from what he went to to this, and they're watching it around the ring and Joe's like, "Wow!" And I'm just watching it like, "Wow." That's a cool man, right? No coincidence. Some young boy from L-Supp grew up in the suburbs of Chicago is putting these people in my life to do what's going on in my life. Yeah. When you run a business, you track every dollar. In your bank, shouldn't make that harder or hold you back. Chime is changing the way people bank by offering

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that book that we keep referencing to Jesus calling this month. Do you still read it every morning and night because I got the morning and night time? So I do it Monday through Friday for the team. I read it in the morning time. This morning I did it from the hotel and I read it, you know, then read the passages out of the Bible. We pray. We lift up. You know, probably about 20 people every morning. I cut it down to 20 people ask me to, you know, I got a list for the

rest of the week. You know, can you lift up the piling? Can you lift up Sean? Can you lift up the

Ryan family? And I tell everybody we don't need to know the circumstances. Just give us the first

name or the family's last name. We're going to lift them up. God knows why we're lifting them up. And we're going to need to see for these people. And we do that. So I still I still read Sarah Young. She's this calling morning and night because there's a nighttime devotion. I don't read that

“for the social media and for the team. I read that for myself. And I believe that, you know,”

listen, she took that from the Bible. I read some things about her. Like, oh, she's trying to interpret the word of the Lord. But how she breaks them, breaks that down. That's story down. I've heard the same comments. I don't give a shit. Right. Well, it does good for me. I'll have the time. I read it. I think it's talking about me. Amen. I'm like, holy shit. I used to read it at the end of the day. Now I read it in the

end of the day and I reflect back on the day. I'm like, that was my fucking day. That was it, right?

“Hey, you know, in this month is all about I think they do, uh, I think they have themes every month.”

I've, I've had this for two years. I didn't read it every day last year. I was like, I put it down for a month or two and then pick it up. And this year I've only missed a couple of days. Yeah. But what I'm noticing is that each month seems to have a theme. Yeah. And this month, I believe is all about surrendering. I think what this morning was. I mean, we've been going here for, I'll read it sometime. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. It definitely speaks to you. And she took it,

you know, right out of the right out of the Bible, the passage is that they're at the bottom.

What is it? The 14? It is the 14th. Yeah. Yeah, the 14th. It's a long one. Heaven is both present and future. As you walk along your life path holding my hand, you are already in touch with the essence of heaven, nearness to me. You can also find many hints of heaven along your pathway because earth is radiantly alive with my presence. Shimmering sunshine, awakens your heart, gently reminding you of my brilliant light, birds, and flowers, trees, and

skies of oak praises to my holy name, keep your eyes and ears fully open, is you journey with me. At the end of your life path is an entrance to heaven. Only I know when you'll reach that destination, but I am preparing you for it, each step of the way. The absolute certainty of your heavenly home gives you peace and joy to help you along your journey. You know that you will reach your home in my perfect timing, not one moment too soon or too late. Let the hope of heaven encourage you

“as you walk along the path of life with me. In shun, what are the passages underneath there?”

Another way they're written, this is a Corinthians 15, 20, through 23, he brews, six, nine, yes. So then passage is back up what Sarah wrote in that story, right? And not a moment too soon, and not a moment too late. You know, is this one about surrendering? That doesn't. It's more about living on the moment. Yeah, and trust in the Lord, yeah. But anyway, so when it comes to surrendering, I think I've talked to just about everybody

about this, so I'm just interested in your take. Yeah, but I don't know what that means. So there's this, actually for the past two months, it's been, it would be in the moment, being the now, quit worrying about the past, quit worrying about the future. I've got the past thing ironed out, took me a long time. Yeah, but I don't think about it. That should anymore. Yeah.

And, um, but the future, like, I'm always thinking about the future. Yeah. I'm always thinking about

how I'm going to hit my financial goals. What's the next vacation? I'm going to take my son on for a father and son trip. What are we, you know, how am I going to, just all the shit in life, right, all the responsibilities, all the expectations that you need to live up to, all the fears, all the, all of the, you know, maybe it is you just shouldn't live an ambitious life.

“Well, I mean, I think living an ambitious life is what takes you out of the moment and”

makes you want to, I mean, the aspirations of success. I mean, do you know what I mean? That's all that stuff makes you think about what you need to prepare to get to the point that you want to be at. Sure. But if you don't live an ambitious life, then you, you won't, maybe you'll be in the moment. I don't, I don't know. Yeah. I live in a, you know, which is five or a lot of goals. I have a lot of business goals, family goals, financial goals. I have a lot of goals. I have some of very

goal-oriented person and some wrong with that. Maybe there is, though, because that takes away from what really matters, which is my son, my wife, my daughter, people that I love. What do you think? Well, the word tells us this for, what can worrying about tomorrow? You can't change a single hair on your head, right? Stay in the

we're doing that. Well, we worry. I don't worry about the future. Do I think of some, some nice

“things and want to take care of my granddaughters and be in successful and having a business and”

being able to make some money to support that? Sure. I don't think there's nothing wrong with that,

but I don't dwell on that. I don't think like the internet says on worth five million far from it,

but I don't say, I want to reach that goal. I need to get that. I need to go get this new job. I need to work, work, work, work. Well, I'm taking myself out of today. Bible tells us be in the moment. The Lord is going to meet us right where we're at. Don't worry about tomorrow. Look at the birds there. They don't store. They don't show that. So they just in God takes care of them. How much more valuable are we as his children? And He is going to

take care of that for us. And I don't think that means go be lazy and don't get off your couch and don't have that. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying lazy. I don't, you know, I used to be judgemental of people that are non-ambitious. Yeah. Not so much anymore. Right. You know, they get a lot more time than I do with their kids with their wife, with doing, he fucking hobbies. And I don't even know what I don't have any hobbies. Yeah. I'm no hobbies.

The work and I spend time on my kids in my wife. And that's it. Well, out of it. Yeah. And I mean, you're successful. And but your relationship with the Lord and I don't, you know, can't comment on that.

“But I think when you're in that fellowship with him and you're saying, you're will be done.”

Not mine. Not I want to have that 5 million in it. It's telling me about there. Nothing like that. You're will. If this movie goes, it sure will. I'm meant to be on Sean Ryan. You, I was praying about it. You'll make it happen. And then look at what comes the team calls me. And says, hey, everybody's all these podcasts. There's our call in boom boom boom boom. And I said, okay, and you know, I was praying on that long before we came up, you know, and picked you. Right.

So I think in that, seek first him, Sean, right? seek first him. And he's going to, you know, he knows he blessed you with that family, plus you with your wife and your boy. He's not, we want you to have all that time. But also want you to be able to take care of them, right? I don't think you'd be sitting here doing this right now. If it wasn't in his wheelhouse, you're a believer. I know you pray. I know you have a fellowship with him. And he's going to

move you around for that season. I never thought I would leave the club.

I was the poster child, right? And but for a season, he brought me and brought me in different places, you know, and I see what he's using me for now. I'm of being a vessel for him now to reach some of the hardest of hearts, right? Some of the guys that I love timetable. I didn't know him through a sports day, because I didn't follow sports, but I love what he does for the kingdom. And sometimes I'll be sitting home in my pool or on the beach, when I'm not traveling,

and I'll be like, man, Tim's not sitting at home right now. He's got multiple things that he's doing. He's got charities. He's doing this. He's doing that. Then I got to get out of my own head. And then my 40-something year friend will tell me Pastor Steve will say, "Tim Teebo is not reaching the dudes that you're reaching." And vice versa. We all have a partner. We are doing for the kingdom, right? And so I had to get used to that. Like, okay, you got me in this pool today, Lord,

you got me some days off that I'm spending with my wife in my mom when she was living and my friends,

“and I'm, you know, the Sidney's in my life and the Christmas in my life, you know?”

Because I sure could be go-go-go. There's a lot of business opportunities that come to

a plate for me now. Real legit ones where I could be making crazy, crazy money, but it's never,

I never get pulled down that road. I'm always, I's thanking for my daily bread. The blessings we have that we are sitting at right now. Rift over our head, families. You know, the blessings of that. I think that's when we talk about that full surrender you're asking about. Is where you say that? Your will be done. And we can't go say, "Okay, I want to make another million dollars so I got to go do this other venture." You know, if the Lord wants you there

because you're going to do something with that flow of money, he's going to put it on your heart and bring you there as long as you're seeking him first. That's that full surrender. It's funny you said that because Terry used to say that all the time, Hulk used to ask me about that, he's like, "Explain that to me. What do you mean by they'll know you buy your fruits?" And I'm like,

"Hey, come pick me up. I'm at the Dow House right now with these strippers doing a line of cocaine."

“They're going to know you buy your fruits. I'm not doing that stuff. I don't know what”

did my toe in the pool as I say, right? And the full surrender. And as long as you're, he's going to guide you. He's the Holy Spirit is not going to let you get off into some venture that's going to ruin your relationship with the Lord. Or believers, the Bible tells us when you call upon a name of the Lord, you shall be saved. Not if you go take this venture, you do this or you don't do that. He's got us and he's going to guide us. We just have to be faithful and to know he's bringing us

where he wants us. Do you ever go back to the Catholic Church at all? No, I haven't been in a Catholic Church in, well, it's a 20-something-plus years. And I'm nothing against the Catholics, nothing against them at all. I don't judge anybody's relationship with the Lord. But I believe in the Bible, the Lord that Christ left us with, right? And we see a picture over here on the wall here. And it's you know what that is? Yes, it's all the 62,000-something-cross references. Yes, from where the Bible

references from the Old Testament to the New Testament. And I've seen that when I walked in on it.

“And that's how many times. And there's just, you just can't replicate that. Like Jeremiah said here,”

when he had the shroud, you could never make that happen again with any kind of digital laser,

friends or whatever. There's certain things that cannot be unexplained, right? And I think when we think about that and we fellowship and when we believe and we say, "You got us, I'm not worrying about tomorrow." You have my tomorrow. We can't change tomorrow. You know, but we know who does, who's on the throne and who's holding it and you know, and it brings us back to the word, "You're will be done." Give us to stare, daily bread, our daily bread on eating food. He provides our

provisions. We have a home over our heads and everything. He gives us what we need. What if Melchancy couldn't be faithful with $5 million bucks? What if you put $5 million in my bank account

or he'd end? What if I got $5 million in my bank account? Now I didn't need him no more.

You know, there's a, there's a, there's a, I do see that a lot. Do the show. I am affiliate. It was some insane wealth. It's crazy. People with some insane wealth. And in there are not, it's weird.

“You know, I think if it's like the people who had a certain, whatever it is in their heads,”

certain, certain amount of wealth they've had. Yes. Where I think they become their own God. They, they think they become their own God. Are they? Yeah. You know, they, I pay attention to this shit. Yeah. They don't need them. My proverbs says, "Don't give me too little that I would have to steal to eat in defame your name, Lord. Don't give me too much that I would forget about you because I don't need you. Give to me my daily bread and I am comfortable with that. Not,

in the, again, to go back and not saying that, I don't, I'm, I'm blessed that I have two amazing careers. Core medical, my body-bell in the world. This movie thing coming up. I am blessed for that, but you know, he gives me what I know as I can handle and be a steward for. And, and I wouldn't want that if it was going to take him away, me away from him. Not him away from me, me away from him. I wouldn't want that. I will just be comfortable right where I'm at. So, I live in an 8 by 10

for a long time. The 2000 square foot home I have and Florida with the land I in the pools,

like Taj Mahal to me. And I thank him for that every day. I say thank you for, wow, I never thought

I would be here in life. I got the white vinyl funds, everything I didn't want. You provided for me in my life. So, that surrender is something that you're doing already. You know, you're given it up to him and seek in him first, you know, you get up every day, you're fellowship. And people ask me, how many times a day you pray as I can't count that? I don't get out of prayer. The only time I am to prayer is in Jesus name I pray. We pray is if we're praying together. I'm praying a lot for somebody.

I'm walking with them in fellowship and with them all the time. I'm in meetings on the phones and not everybody got the memo, not everybody's a believer. I call the belief and get in the memo. I'm on the phone dealing with different chairman from around the country for the bodybuilding industry. Deal me and Sidney deal with different people. Sometimes these guys are on the other end, getting jazzy a little bit. And my mind's going back to, and I'd like to run into you right now.

What a ball-pain hammer, you know. And I have to center myself, I have to say Lord, thank you. You didn't bring me this far to, for me, to go screw this up right here.

I was sitting in this meeting one time, Sean. It was all these big money guys.

“They were talking to me about a business and they said, hey Mel, let me ask you a question. They go,”

you know, you got to see F.O. And I go, what? And they go to see F.O. and I'm like, oh man, I don't know what that means. And there's like eight and nine people in this room and I'm like, starting to sweat and everything, I'm like, I got, I got to be honest with him. I said, no, I go, guys, I don't know what a see F.O. is. I can tell me what that is. And they go, yeah, like a chief financial officer somebody that takes care of your finances. And I go, yeah, I got one.

I go Jesus Christ and they all look that each other, men and women, right? And they're like, okay, and I go, that's my CFO. I said, he brings me what I need and make sure I don't get what I don't need. And I go, he's got me right where he wants me. And I was kind of embarrassed because I

didn't want to see F.O. was, you know, I was fresh off from the penitentiary. I never seen a

credit card. I also I did was cash. So, you know, I always just say Sean, there's no coincidences

“in the kingdom. I don't think I made that term up, but I think I coined it. And I can't tell you,”

how many times me, pastor, Steve, Chris, so many people that I see that that happens in life. And I say, there's no coincidence. No coincidence that I'm sitting here, you know, there's no coincidence that Joe Rogan who is a straight-up non-believer back in the day has had some amazing people on his show to fellowship with him. And now you see Joe, it's, you know,

change in things. You've had some amazing people sitting in this chair that are theologians.

And I mean, I had to come on after Jeremiah and I was like, this guy knows every verse. He, that mind of his is brilliant, you know, but God puts us in them places and he uses us at them times, you know, for that full surrender. And I was just to be thankful and say, you got me. He's going to give you that time which your boy gave him to you. You know, your wife and you spend the time with them. And everybody that knows you, we know so many people we talked about

in the beginning of this podcast, so many people. You know, everybody tells me about you,

amazing husband, amazing father, amazing man. I don't, I don't think the guys that we're talking

about were telling me that because they just wanted to talk into the air. Yeah, guys tell me about you because I seen them on your show. And that's gold right here. It's cool to hear right, bro. You know, where we're all play a part in the kingdom for sure. See you later. What's all this building? What are you looking at? We're high.

“Hi, I'm Sarah Adams, the host of vigilance elites, the watch floor, where we highlight what matters.”

It became a permissive state. Explain to you why it matters and then aim to leave you feeling better and form than you were before you hit play. Terrace, hostile intelligence agencies, organized crime, not everything is urgent, but this show will focus on what is neat and no, not just what is nice to know. All right, Mel, we're back from the break. Let's talk about some of the stuff you're doing with core medical. Yes. So core medical, a hormone replacement

company, obviously for men and women. And we've been blessed, Sean, core medical has been in business for 16 years. I believe plus years. But the last eight and a half years, we've been really had the blessing of working with our veterans. As you know, we were talking about it. We're huge. My partners Sydney and myself and the whole team are huge into our military veterans. We're appreciative of it. I said, I came from a whole family full of veterans and stuff like

that. So we had the blessing of working with them. And so we have something that's called our core medical foundation. Every year we have our core medical appreciation weekend and military appreciation weekend. That's usually the last weekend in February. Where this past year,

And just super cool to give back, Sean, to the men like you, who served our country, you know, you guys gave that your time and sacrifice for our country, right? So Sydney and myself are super into that. And we're working on something core right now. We're just about ready to put the finishing touches on something with the VA. As you know, working with the VA's for veterans and ducks could be a little taskful at some times, right? A little hard at some times, right,

then the VA VA. No. I say, me and Sydney always say, we don't like to talk bad about the VA

because we didn't serve, but now everybody who did serve like, well, we will, right? So, you know, well, we will. So we're we're getting ready to put the finishing touches on something with that. Where our veterans will be able to go to the VA. And they will be able to get their hormone replacement and facilitated to them through us here at Quorum Medical for completely free that the VA will pay for their hormone replacement. And you know, the VA right now doesn't

even want to consider hormone replacement, right? And if they do, they're doing it the completely

“wrong way. They're giving them a guy some testosterone every two weeks, which is the worst thing”

you could do. It's giving you that roller coaster ride, right? There's no supportive meds, no anti-estrogens, no medications to run your FSH and LH, which is the hormones and our testicles, right? They don't know what they're doing with it, right? So Sydney's been working and it's been our prayer and our dream for the last eight and a half years that we can get the VA's attention and he's talking to some people up there, the heads of the VA, who you and him knew the same person.

They were you guys were talking about earlier. And to get this done for our veterans that would be

so amazing that they would get this hormone replacement that testosterone replacement and get

any paid for from the VA. You know, it's been, yeah, that would be how cool. I would be really big. I mean, we've been working and working. It's been our dream, you know, for the last eight and a half years and we put some amazing people together on this team and guys, you know, um, rock people leave the VA as a pan for that stuff yet. It's, they don't, they won't even, um, this is here, say, I don't go to the VA. I'm going to the VA and over, sure, 10 years. Yeah,

I'd rather just, I'd rather just, yeah, take care of my medical should myself and not have the VA involved. Yeah. But I heard there have been a lot of improvements in the VA. But, um, and everybody I know that I served with is on hormone replacement. Yeah. Uh, therapy. And every doctor that I bring in here says, pretty much, we should all be on hormone replacement therapy. Sure. Except the VA doctors. Except that I don't think that because they're like, you know,

you go in the VA in the range for a man today is, uh, from, on your testosterone levels from 300 to 1000.

“So if you're 301, they're like, Sean, you're good. Yeah. What about the other, you know, 700 points?”

Or what about what's my estrogen doing? What's my FSH and LH? They're plummeted. We're older men. Now, you know, they just don't seem to care about stuff like that. And we've seen it in ourselves. And so many people that you know that are part of our core medical team. There are strategic partners from two LAM to Vince and Rocco Vargas to Cody Alford to Nick Cumulattis. Cumulattis. We have a strong list of brothers that are our strategic partners who we've helped overcome that

problem that they were having. The VA wasn't paying attention to their hormones. You're good. Here take a take a percussive take this, you know, and they weren't doing that. And we brought these, these men on and watched the change and we're with our outreach program with our, you know, our core medical foundation. We've seen the brothers that we have taken and we've gotten their hormones clicking on all cylinders as I like to say, change their life's around, change their life around.

And I see some guys that were like, we were taking all the medications that the VA was given us. And we were coming home and we couldn't even pay attention to our kids. We had no, no life in us. We were just, you know, and Nick, Nick, KB and one of them, and he jumped on the team with us. And we got him on the hormone replacement and just, wow, just watched him. He's got two successful business. He's running. He's, you know, so many people telling us we're working longer hours. We're

“doing this. We're focused. And that's what, that's what Sydney and myself, that was our dream,”

you know, eight and a half years ago when we started working with veterans and the first responders

Every time we think we, we got to the top of the ladder, they put another step up for us, but, you know,

Sydney and myself, eight and a half years ago took some of these veterans for completely free. And we said, you know what, we're not going to deal with Washington and the VA no more. You're coming aboard with us. We got you. Nick K, we got you. You know, we're going to, we do this for, for you guys and get your hormone replacement. We're going to pay for it. So we can see the benefits that's going on with your life since stuff. And, you know, the suicide rate in veterans. And then

we, we have to prove in fact through our doctors, through the, real life studies that, you know, the suicide rate is dropped when these veterans are, their hormones are running on all cylinders. Right. There's a reason we have testosterone. We have estrogen. We have FSH and LH and our bodies. There's a reason. Like, there's no blood test for how white your fingernails are, right? But there's a blood test for all of them hormones for something guy to be saying. You're good.

“Take a take a value. You're good. And, you know, they're not addressing it. And that's what we”

wanted to do. So we're so we're, we're right there. And if we can, when we, when, I know we're going to get this done because I've been praying on it and we've seen the, the good effects that it's having with people. And we will be so happy when we can make that announcement that it went through and that veteran will go right to the VA and he will get, you know, his, his blood work done through us and the VA will sign off on that veteran and then that veteran will come through us and the

medications will be paid for from, you know, from the VA. So we're, we're, we're so close to that. It's, it's such a blessing for us. And, and another thing we do, we have an outreach program, scholarships. So, you know, I tell anybody that's out there listening. If you were through a hardship and you can't afford the testosterone replacement, DM me, please, guys, DM me, that everybody that's out there watching this if you're a veteran, DM me, we have scholarships

that will take care of that payment for you guys, right? And you just to come to us and let us know if you're, if you're having a hard time in the hardships, we will, we will, we will work with the veterans. One COVID was going on. We worked with anything. So everybody's Sydney sent me a message and he said, we are not getting rid of any of these patients, you know, some people were laid off. Some people couldn't work, right? And he goes, we call the patients and we said, don't worry about it.

If, let's, let's work on the honor program. If you are laid off or you are a government worker, whatever it was, you didn't want to take the jab and you didn't, you can't work. Let us know. We're not going to stop your replacement. Wow, we'll keep you going and we have them going. And we said, but be honest with us, right? Don't take advantage of it. Let somebody who really needs it step up to the plate. And we trust our patients and we know they're we're good with them

and they're good with us. So we're very, we're very excited for that. And like I said, the viewers hit me up on a DM and we will be able to, you know, talk and facilitate anybody that's looking

to come our way. And once we get this thing done with the VA, it's going to be a game changer.

I don't know, because, you know, as some veterans are, you know, some of our down on their lock, right? Some of them are going through some hardships and we've seen it. And I know yours, you've seen in so many people and having your hormones back to where they're supposed to be at the age of we're supposed to be at, right? You know, I wouldn't keep my, you know, at 57. I wouldn't keep my testosterone levels at the top at a range at 1,000. I don't need that no more.

I mean, I run in the middle 700s, take a little bit of testosterone to keep me there, keeps me going. I couldn't do what I do with the travel. And I still train and I'm still going

“all over the country without it, you know, I would be plummeted. So, you know, that's what that's”

where we're very pleased that what we're doing and the direction we're going in and our veterans means so much to us, you know. I hope that goes through. That would be great. That goes through. And when it does, I'll definitely let you know about that, you know. And we, maybe we can get back on and talk about that because I would just just, it helps so many people out and change so many lives, right? I'm a believer coming from the family. I came from in the veteran family. I came from

and stuff, you know, the sacrifices you guys go and do for us. And then we, the veterans come back here and we can't even facilitate them and help them out in any way, shape or form. I mean, I don't want to get in any of the politics stuff, but if we're not taking care of our veterans here and the people that are fighting for our country to keep us safe, and we're going to take care of some people that, you know, might not be from this country or didn't do anything for us,

that it seems to me like it's upside down, right? I mean, we're all getting into a whole

“other four hours of topic, right? But, you know, so that's what we've been working so strongly”

on that and we're so pleased that we're at and excited to be able to make that announcement

it's, it's, we're so close and if we can get this done, it'll be, it'll be a game changer for

it's all about for Sidney and myself and we have these military weekends and to see the families

“coming, to see the kids and the families coming, watching this, this one, this one family,”

that got one of the houses and just watching them tear up there, it just managed. It tears me up, but it just, it's, it's, it makes me smile inside like that we're making a difference and we're helping our brothers and sisters out that looked out for us, right? And, you know, not, I didn't see everybody, you know, I didn't join the military, look what I went and did, right? I wasn't the

first one standing up saying I want to go serve my country. So the people that were means a lot

to me, you know, coming from the family like I said, I did and seeing what the veterans did in the sacrifices and coming home and some of these men and women having PTSD and going through what they're going through. We talked about Cody Alfred Wright, you know, Cody Be the first one to come on her and say man, he was in some dark places, you know, and now I watch him and I'm like, wow, what a different dude, you know, he keeps his hormones intact, you know, and he's, we just

got businesses and, you know, his relationship with the Lord and, you know, he wasn't doing that,

“yeah, handful years ago, you know, so we've watched it, I've watched it change and that's why we've”

been like, would have been great, eight, eight, and a half years ago, if we could have got into the

VA and and turned them around and got him on the, on the team with this, but he just didn't want

to hear all that, you know, yeah. So that's cool that we're, I'm, I'm very excited for the future of that, you know, how about this movie? Well, that's that happened. So we are in the stage right now where they are talking to some writers, right, you know, of course, Duane's relationship with the rocks relationship, John's relationship with so many writers and movie studios and stuff like that, so, you know, they got the best of the best, you know, almost seven years ago when we started

this, I remembered Duane telling me, I'm going to put the eight team together for you and, you know, I had no doubt in my mind that he was going to put the eight team together and he sure did, you know, and we were talking about this the other night and he said, you know, Mal, he goes, I know you're

getting ready to go on Sean and he goes, but I, I just want the viewers to know something about

you, he goes, you know, you didn't chase this, he goes, I did, I mean in him, he goes, I did, he goes, we talked then the phone, we knew each other, through a bunch of mutual friends, you know, a bunch of mutual friends like me and you did, Duane, and when he said that, you know, I'm much of the old story, can you tell because of where you're at and I told him the story and he goes, let me quarterback this for you, you know, and he goes, then he goes, it made me think about

that he called me the other night and he said, it just made me think about how you just sat back and just prayed about everything and through your relationship with the Lord, you said, okay, you trusted in me and he goes, and here we are today and he goes, you know, that says a lot he said, no for you, he goes, because a lot of guys in your position would have been like, call this guy up, I got a story, call this guy up, I got a story and you know, funny stories that them guys tell me is,

just sitting the pool and relax for a little bit longer until we need you for this, you know, but then you're gonna have to go to work, Melon, I'm like, I got you DJ, I got you, you know, so we laugh and joke about all that and John, so it's super exciting, the writer phases

“is coming up next, you know, and you know, with this stuff, it's it's a little bit of a process, right?”

We tell it organically, we put it together and on our timing, no rush and you know, we have a home which we'll we'll talk about at another time and and there, they will be making the movie for us and just we're in a really good spot, so you know, people ask me, when do you think you, you know, the movie could be, you know, you creating it filming and I think like that by this time next year, I think that that will be a, we could be in the filming process, filming the movie, bad,

which should be going so exciting. Yeah, it's exciting because you know, I'm going to obviously a consultant on the movie and we'll be on the sets with everybody, you know, and, you know, going over the parts and everything like that, so I'm definitely looking forward to that and of course, you know, it's, you know, getting that time with, with Wayne and with John and stuff and getting John a little bit built up some more and feeding him and training him and stuff and getting the

size, funny story was when when when when DJ, when he said, hey, I got the perfect guy to could play and, you know, when he said John, burnt all, you know, he did that movie with them, snitch, you know, where he was in there with John and, and when he picked John and though we were talking about, I laughed and he goes, what are you laughing about it? He goes, oh, you know, everybody, Mel, you know, and I said, I know him, you know, and I said, I'm going to tell you how I

know him and I told him it's Sydney's brother-in-law and, you know, he's just shaking his head and, so we were like, we're not going to get an a-list actor to us, it's going to be £290, right?

mind to this and think of the perfect guy. So we call John up, we tell John the story and I already know him now through through Sydney and the family and we're getting John on the phone and we're all on a, on a three-way call with the team and, and Duane says, you know, John, you know, 10, 12 pounds on you, the video cameras, the angles and stuff like that, you know, you'll, you'll look massive on there and, and John goes 10, 12 pounds, I'm talking 30, 40 pounds and I said, well,

John, we're not trying to kill you. You got to live to play me, right? We can't kill you, you know, I said, it's going to be hard to get that kind of muscle, you know, you're not a young kid anymore, but, but we'll definitely, you know, with me training them and, and him eating the way he needs the eat and John is so focused on whatever he does. Whatever part he is playing, he is focused, he's that method actor, he is focused on it, you know, DJ Duane is focused on,

“on what he's doing and, I mean, I couldn't ask for two better guys in my corner doing this, right?”

The seven-buck production team has been nothing but amazing to work with and it's, uh, and I just

love the journey to where we're at, right? I mean, you know, we know it's, it's we're on our way to picking the writers and getting made and we know that's going to be another adventure doing all that, but from where, started and where it's at now, it's just been so cool and so amazing and I gained a dear friend out of it, uh, one of one of the guys at seven-buck production, um, by the name of Frankie who, who he nicknamed himself my prospect, because he had to put the story together, right?

So he could go see, I don't mean your prospect, you know, um, he's like a little brother to me, you know, he just had his first, uh, baby, him and his wife, not too long ago, and uh, I got the see that and be a part of that and, uh, you know, through this journey, I've, I've got,

“got so close with these guys and, and just gained, I say family out of it, so it's pretty cool”

to be, we're at now, I'm excited for that. You had a lot of good stuff happening, for sure, for old as a, for sure, old as a, takes a spec to that folks are under. Yeah, I just, I just give it up to him and your time, you know, I don't get impatient, COVID slowed things down, the writers strike, the actor strike, we went through all that, that slowed things down, you know, but, you know, we were okay, I remember, I remember doing telling me now, you know, thank you for being this

patient. I said, brother, it's good. It's in his timing. The thing's going to put out when he wants it to and reach the people he wants it to, I'm good. I'm going to do it to tell him and continue to relax and tan in the yard and hang in the pool and it can, it can tend to my other businesses and I'm not pushing nothing along, right? It's, it's not, it's, I'm not grabbing the wheel,

as I always say, right? The Lord's got the wheel and he is going to do this in his timing.

So, you know, and I asked him before, I said, well, a lot of people that you work with, DJ, is up, to they get impatient, he said, yeah, he said, think about it. He goes, you know, we're almost seven

“years into this. He goes, it's a slow process over here. He goes, people are like, when's this going to happen?”

He goes, you're just laid back and I said, I'm blessed to be part of what we're doing. That's cool. You know, so some, some very cool stuff coming up and I'm excited for it and, you know, my prayers, the Lord tell the Lord, just keep me healthy and I got some injuries and I'm banged up a little bit and flying in the airports constantly and, you know, go, go, go, sometimes I get a little worn down a little bit with the body, but I said, you're going to keep me healthy and, you know,

until we, till you bring me home. Right on, man. So, I'm excited about the future with that, you know, I'll bet you are. Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, we're wrapping up the interview here. Yeah. Well, we have this new thing that we do. It's called the hot question. Oh, are you familiar with

Claude? No. And Thropic? No. Okay. It's basically the most powerful large language AI model

in the world right now. Okay. But, uh, for consumers. So, I had Claude scraped the internet. Every internet, every interview, every viral clip, every controversial moment tied to you in the Hell's Angels. And this is what it came back with. Uh, ready? Am I ready? All right. The war between the Hell's Angels and the Outlaws has been called one of the bloodiest, biker wars in American history. During this war, Outlaws boss Kevin Spike O'Neill reportedly told his headman

that if the target's wife was home during the hit to kill her, too, because in his words, if you begin killing these guys as old ladies, they'll quit wanting to be Hell's Angels. So, here's the question. What was the single most dangerous moment of your entire time in the Hell's Angels? So, I know Spike. I know Kevin O'Neill. You know, he's currently, you know,

with all the bombings that were going on. You know, now it wasn't face-to-face. You know,

“we never know. It's flipped the ignition and the car was going to blow up. You opened up a door.”

The door was going to blow up. You know, I mean, if people were on the streets, just kind of watching Melchancy back in the day and being like, the stew just came out of a store, he opened up the trunk of his vet and grabbed this big stick with a mirror on it. And at £290, I'm down on my knees looking at all the wheel wells and stuff like that. They probably thought I was a lunatic, right? Like, what is this guy doing? Do you imagine it's grocery stock shopping waiting for your wife

and I come out and do all that? You're like, what is this knucklehead? Do you literally did that every

time? Yes. Holy shit. Yes, because we never knew what if I went in the gym for two, you know,

I trained for two hours. I come on that gym parking lots while I had open. I, you know, big, big, the gym was in big parking lot. Big, uh, uh, I had also stores around it. If they went on it, well, and I don't know, they're there and did that, you know, or when we were in at the clubhouse, wired something and explosive to the door. If you're not allowed anything, every one of our guys,

“one of our guys found an explosive device under his wheel well of his truck. I believe it was a”

Bronco, Chris, Chris and a little bit more when you talked to him because they had to come in the ATF had a come in. He found a device. So he called up the local police and said, hey, there's something under my truck that doesn't look too kosher. It's got some wires hanging from it. I think we probably need you guys out. Well, they called the ATF out. They had a come out and with their, with their bomb squad, they had a build a perimeter around this because they couldn't,

uh, I believe, if I'm saying it right, they couldn't, uh, do you detach it and they hit it with a water cannon to blow it up? No, they had to explode the bomb with a water cannon, but they built a perimeter around it and they couldn't deactivate it and they hit it like that. So yeah, he fell

that under his truck. I never found nothing under mine, you know, in my house stores and stuff

everywhere I went. I always was looking around when I pulled up to one of my houses at nighttime and got out of my vehicle. My gun was in my hand. Wasn't ready for me to pull out. It was in my hand with one in the chamber and the hammer back back in the day. You know, ready to go in case

“they were hiding in the bushes or wherever they were. So, you know, I think that dangerous,”

most dangerous times for me is when all the bombings started because now it kind of came from anywhere. You know, if we ran into each other where we were faced the face, then it was on faced the face and whatever happened happened, you know, but the bombings was definitely a time that we all had a billet and looking back now, definitely the most dangerous times. Roger that. There's a follow-on. If someone was caught out here worrying a hell's angels patch and they didn't earn it,

what actually happened to them? And did you ever have to be the one to handle that personally? We did have an incident in the guy, had his whole back tattooed with a hell's angel patch. Are you serious? Yeah. And he ended up coming into our neighborhood. We didn't know him. But when he was approached, he said that he was a member in Oakland of all places where Sonny and the crew were from, right? So, he said he was a member in Oakland back in the day. Well, when you

leave the club, they made that you put an out-date on your tattoo. So, when you have a tattoo on you, you, you, wherever you have the hell's angel tattoo, if you leave, it'll say out 10, you know, or April, or April, or 11, 2004, or 2004. You know, my out-date was under here. I covered it up. You know, it was under there. It said out, you know, the month you're out the year you're out. So, you couldn't go see anybody and go, "Oh, come and act of hell's angels, all right?"

So, that you had an out-date when you left the club. He didn't have an out-date on there. But he was telling the fellows that, you know, people around the neighborhood, that, you know, he was a hell's angel. He was from Oakland. He got the tattoo. So, when we got a whole Oakland

and said this guy's name, they never heard of him. So, now was our job to go remove that tattoo,

remove it, remove the tattoo. And that's exactly what we did. We caught him in a bar, dragged him out, obviously, not on his own will, and put him in a van and put some irons on it. I took the tattoo off. But, you know, I didn't know the guy I never seen him before. He

tank tops on and what he was thinking. But, I mean, that happens. It's crazy that that happens.

Nowadays, you know, you can go get the replica, the patches from China. You can go get any club and get their whole entire stuff, the President tags, the tags, the back, the fronts, and you see the fake stuff going on. We responded earlier. There was a fake, where there was a mongol taking a hell's angel patch off a guy in a motorcycle and he took the patch off him, the supposed hell's angel. And the guy didn't even get off his bike to do anything.

The mongol grabbed it and your team was showing me a video earlier and I had a respondent. And I go, yes, as soon as I seen that, I knew that was fake. There was no altercation. The mongol pulled

“up and, you know, I believe it was both staged. They were both were fake, right? So, but it's crazy”

as that sounds. I mean, there was people going into that, you know. I mean, no tattoo artist that was in our neighborhoods would go put the hell's angel tattoo at death had on somebody unless they heard it from us. We worked with a few tattoo guys, so when a member got in the club, you know, you went to our tattoo artist and you got the tattoo on your right away, right?

There's the first thing you're doing after you got your patch. Go on, you know, after your party

and for the next day you're going to the tattoo shop and you're putting your, you know, my first hell's angel tattoo was right under her. You know, um, but there was tattoo artist that were, you know, these guys were coming in with a stencil and saying, hey, I'm a member here, and when you put this on me, damn, and you weren't, you know, using their head and weren't thinking and we've had that incident too, where we had a, we had a school a couple tattoo artists,

“you'll put that on nobody unless it's coming from us. We don't even know you. Why would you do that?”

So, you know, it's this crazy as it sounds. You know, people are, uh, doesn't surprise me. Yeah, it's just weird. It's could be, right? That's the last thing I'd want to do is if I was just the normal person. I mean, even if I thought it was cool and I looked up to these clubs, I wouldn't want to put their insignia on me. You know, members have gave their life for that club. Obviously, we all went through, right? The people we lost, gave up their lives to be a part of what we,

what we felt was, you know, what we believed in the ultimate sacrifice. So, yep. Well, Mel, I figured maybe we can end this with a prayer. Yeah, you want to lead it? I would love to, but I would love to. Heavenly Father. Father, we thank you. We thank you for this fellowship

“time with me. Thank you for showing. Father, I thank you for showing. I thank you for his life. I thank”

you for speaking upon his heart. Blessing this family. Well, thank you for your Holy Spirit that guides us, that leads us Lord. Atchipana, our hearts, full surrender, that we may know your word, your word, your truth, with set us free. Father, we pray that everybody that would watch this podcast, that they would deeply feel your Holy Spirit here upon us, that they would understand that, you know, they are not too far gone. No matter where they're at, rock bottom, as I say, rock bottom

is built some of the best relationships with you Lord. From prisons to hardships, let them feel your presence. Meet them, Father. Great where they are. They may know and feel your love, each and every one of us, because you, Father, love does so much, but you gave us your one and only son. Lord, cannot say your Jesus Christ, and whoever shall believe, and call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved. They may know that, may they feel that, may this podcast be a blessing

to brothers and sisters, and in your name Jesus we believe, in your name Jesus we pray, and all God's people sit in man, amen. Beautiful. Thank you, Bro. Thank you, man. So cool.

Bell. God bless, brother of you, two, brother. God bless you. Super happy. We're not an amazing day.

Me too. I wouldn't look forward to this since we set this up for five, six weeks ago. I've been, I've been looking forward to and praying on it and, and my expectations were, were, were met. Sean, I have to tell you that. It was, it's been great and you are just as them guys were telling me about you are a good dude and an amazing dude and I can see your passion, I can see your heart and I can see what the Lord's doing in your life. And what a blessing that is,

and, and, and, and, and, and touched every, checked every mark off of, uh, being knuckleheads. Yeah. And here we are.

“Right back, guys. I love you, bro. Thank you.”

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