The Untold Story of the Texas Biker Gang Shoot-Out
By Nathaniel Penn
18 hours ago
... Afterward — after nine bikers were shot dead, 20 were wounded, and an unprecedented 177 people from at least five different clubs wound up in police custody — the Waco Police Department would claim that the bloodbath was triggered by the Bandidos and the Cossacks ... And virtually every biker I spoke with last June and July — Cossacks, Bandidos, members of multiple other clubs, 22 bikers in total — believes that the real blame for all the dead bodies belongs with the Waco police ...
The Bandidos were baptized in blood. They were founded in 1966 by an ex-Marine and Vietnam vet named Don Chambers, whose road name was Mother and who led the club until 1972, when he and two other men were convicted of double murder. They abducted two drug dealers who'd cheated the Bandidos on a meth deal, forced the dealers to dig their own graves in the Texas desert, then shot them and set fire to their bodies. Chambers's three successors were all taken down by the feds for a variety of offenses. During the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, the Bandidos did everything the feds continue to accuse them of doing today, including trafficking in narcotics and prostitution. But there hasn't been a major Bandidos bust since 2011, when 39 club members and associates were arrested in Dallas, San Antonio, and Denver on gun and drug charges ...
Over the past two years, the Bandidos and Cossacks appear to have been engaged in a simmering power struggle. In November 2013, two Cossacks were stabbed in a roadhouse parking lot in Abilene; the president of the local Bandidos chapter was arrested in connection with the assault. Earlier this year, on March 22, Cossacks allegedly forced a Bandido rider off I-35 in Lorena and beat him so brutally—with chains and metal pipes—that he nearly lost an eye. At a gas station in Mingus that same day, Bandidos confronted the Cossack son of a local politician and demanded that he remove the Texas “rocker,” or badge, from his cut. When he refused, they allegedly attacked him with a hammer. The FBI and members of both clubs believe several additional clashes were never reported ...
http://www.gq.com/story/untold-story-texas-biker-gang-shoot-out