All language subtitles for Gangland Chronicles - S01E04 - Hells Angels The Sonny Barger Years

Gangs rule their territories through
ruthless enterprises, fear, and a strict code.

Deviate from this code, or challenge
their power, and retribution soon follows.

Especially in the most dangerous
biker gang in America, the Hells Angels.

Ruled by a ruthless president,

Sonny Barger's Hells
Angels creates the bloodstained

blueprint for all outlaw
biker clubs that follow.

Here are three stories that cement the
criminal legacy of this vicious gang.

First, one member pays the ultimate price
for stealing from his chapter president.

I can't even begin to
imagine what he's feeling.

Abject terror, abject fear.

Next, the Hell's Angels kill a man in
front of thousands at a rock concert.

The Angel stabs him three times in the
neck and takes him down to the ground.

And finally, the feds attempt to
take down the Oakland chapter.

One of the prosecutors says, we want
to prove they're the mafia on wheels.

These are the stories from the sunny
barger years of the Hell's Angels.

This is Gangland Chronicles. 1957.

Oakland, California.

A new and menacing sight appears on the
streets of this hard-working port city.

It's the outlaw motorcycle
gang called the Hell's Angels.

A lot of these biker
gangs are made up of these

ex-servicemen who've just come back home.

They find that it's difficult
to readjust to civilian life.

The Hells Angels founded their first
chapter in San Bernardino in 1948.

By 1958, the gang has added
chapters in San Francisco and Oakland.

Early Hells Angels
members embrace a freewheeling

lifestyle of partying and violence.

But they lack organization.

That would change when a new leader
would emerge in Oakland, California.

His name is Sonny Barger.

When he assumes control of
the Oakland Hells Angels,

he sees an opportunity to bring
order and strength to the club.

He created a structure
within this organization,

so he borrowed the
rank-and-file structure from the military.

Sonny Barger had genuine
leadership capabilities.

He was also probably the toughest
son of a bitch in the bunch, too.

Under Sonny's leadership,

the Oakland Hells Angels go from
organized recreation to organized crime.

They start by building a fearsome
reputation through brutal gang violence.

The Hells Angels are
fighting with rival gangs.

They have confrontations with police.

They openly declare themselves as outlaws.

In the 1960s, Barger and
his lieutenants turned

the gang's muscle into serious money,

seizing control of the area's booming
LSD market and crushing any competition.

They were hands-on involved in
a massive organized drug trade.

The vice president of the
chapter alone is making

as much as $200,000 a year
dealing drugs. $1.8 million today.

They're not just poor ragtag bikers.

There's a lot of money involved,

which will lead to territorial
turf wars and a lot of murder.

The Oakland chapter's
rise from rags to riches

inspires a fanatical
loyalty to Sonny Barger.

They'll make anyone who
crosses him pay the ultimate price,

even if the culprit is one of their own.

Like 21-year-old
Oakland member Paul Ingalls.

Oakland, California.

A group of Hells Angels
interrogates Ingalls for allegedly

breaking a cardinal rule of
the gang's code of conduct.

He had been accused of stealing
Sonny Barger's rare coin collection.

The Hells Angels demand
that Ingalls admit his guilt.

So they start to go to work on him.

And then starting using
things like a cattle prod.

And they're using it on
things like his groin.

On his face.

The amount of pain that Ingalls is in.

Not only pain, but I'm sure shock and
terror and just abject fear for his life.

Time is rapidly running
out for Paul Ingalls.

February 1st, 1968.

The Oakland Hells Angels are trying to
beat a confession out of Paul Ingalls,

a young member they think stole
from club president Sonny Barger.

Ingalls insists he's innocent.

But the bikers don't believe him.

And they take the
torture to the next level.

At one point, one of the angels
goes, hang on, boys, don't mark him up.

Can't make this look like a murder, can
we? No, we gotta keep things above board.

So they decide to take another route.

They opened his mouth, they pried open
his mouth, and they shoved a bunch of reds,

which were barbiturates, down his
throat, and they tried to make him swallow it.

And it gets to a point that
Ingalls has ingested so many

of these pills that
eventually his body just gives up,

goes limp, and he falls into a coma.

The Oakland Hells Angels dump Ingles at
his house in the middle of the night,

where he's later discovered by
his wife and rushed to the ER.

Paul Ingles is pronounced dead on arrival.

Members of the Inner Sanctum were
actually killing one of their own,

and they did that to set an
example for the other members.

If you mess with Sonny
Barger, if you steal

from the president, you will be executed.

No one is ever charged with Ingle's death.

Across Hell's Angels chapters,

the message of intimidation has
been received and understood.

But the rest of the world has yet to see
the Hell's Angels for who they really are.

And it all comes to a head
on one fateful weekend when

the Hell's Angels are caught
in the national spotlight.

The Altamont Free Concert.

December 6, 1969.

The Rolling Stones are set to play a
free concert at the Altamont Speedway,

about 50 miles east of Oakland.

Rolling Stones was one of them.
But they had the Grateful Dead,

they had Jefferson Airplane,

and the manager of the Grateful
Dead had this wonderful idea, hey,

let's get the Hells
Angels to be our security.

At first, the gang tells
organizers they aren't interested.

But the Stones' manager sweetens the deal.

So we're at $500 in beer,
the Hells Angels were there.

It's sort of the muscle for the event.

An estimated 300,000
fans descend on Altamont.

They immediately put their bikes
parked right along the front of the stage.

It created a natural barrier
between the stage and the audience.

Stoned kids squeeze past the bikes
and begin climbing up onto the stage,

only to be roughed up and
thrown off by the Hell's Angels.

But the crowd, strung out
on drugs, just keeps coming.

Hell's Angels in front of the
stage came bearing pool cues.

And they beat the hell out
of people in the front rows.

As evening falls and the
Rolling Stones hit the stage...

Sonny Barger and his Hells
Angels are running low on patience.

Somewhere during that time,

a young black guy named Meredith
Hunter tries to climb up on the stage,

gets knocked back down by
one of the Hells Angels.

In a fit of rage,
Meredith Hunter draws a gun from

his jacket and points
it towards the stage.

Alan Pissarro sees him pull out a gun,
reaches into his ankle where he has a knife,

The Hell's Angels are
about to take the violence

at Altamont to a terrifying new level.

December 6th, 1969, Altamont Speedway.

A rock concert headlined by the
Rolling Stones has descended into

brutal violence between the
audience and the Hells Angels.

Gang member Alan Passaro pulls a
knife on 18-year-old Meredith Hunter

after he draws a gun and
points it at the stage.

Alan Passaro jumps on Hunter's back,
stabs him three times in the neck,

and takes him down to the ground.

Where Hell's Angels swarm over
his body, kick him, stand on him,

and Barger's sitting there watching.

Someone in the crowd convinces them
to pick up Meredith Hunter's body.

He is taken backstage, where
medical staff pronounce him dead.

Alan Passaro is the only
member of the Hells Angels

tried for the killing of Meredith Hunter.

But he is found not guilty.

They were able to verify that
Meredith Hunter actually did lunge

at the stage and look like he
was going to shoot Mick Jagger.

And so the Hells Angel gets off.

From this point on, the Hells
Angels are known nationally.

The spotlight doesn't slow down the gang,

but it does get the
attention of the feds. 1970s.

The Hells Angels enter
into a new criminal era.

Sonny Barger will say, in the
1970s, we were all gangsters.

The group pivots their
trafficking operation from

LSD to a highly addictive
and lucrative drug, meth.

It was easy to mass produce,
manufacture, distribute, sell,

and you could make it domestically.

The Department of Justice
estimates that by the late 1970s,

the Oakland meth operation is raking
in $160,000 a day in street sales,

$245 million a year today.

And this puts them on the Fed's radar.

So police and law
enforcement feel that they have to

go after the Hells Angels
in a more systematic way.

And they start cracking down,
investigating the meth network.

Local law enforcement pursues
the Oakland chapter relentlessly.

The gang hits back at the cops
with a new level of violence.

Their first victim, San Jose
Police Sergeant John Kroc,

Has recently busted several Oakland
Hells Angels on meth trafficking charges.

So the Hells Angels decide that, okay,

these police officers are
becoming a bit of a nuisance,

so it's time for us to take care of them
by sending them a little bit of a message.

February 19th, 1977.

Sergeant Crocht approaches his car.

He doesn't see what is coming next.

The bomb badly injures
Crocht, but he survives.

Their next target is Solano
County Detective William Zerbe.

Neither of them will
die in these explosions,

but it is these bombings
that make it so that the feds

are fed up with this
chapter of the Hells Angels.

They said, you know, how are
we going to go after them?

So they started to go
after them with the RICO Act.

The RICO Act will later bring down
New York Italian mafia families.

But its first real test is
actually the Hells Angels.

Essentially, the idea
was, how can we go after

the head of the snake,
which was Sonny Barger?

If we take off the head of the snake,

then we're going to
topple the whole organization.

But they are going to need to
prove that Sonny Barger is calling

the shots in order to nail him
and the Hell's Angels to the wall.

One of the prosecutors says, we want
to prove they're the Mafia on wheels.

After a year of interviewing
eyewitnesses and reviewing

prior convictions of
Oakland chapter members,

the feds believe they have
enough evidence to indict

Sonny Barger and his fellow Hells Angels.

Will they bring Barger and
his Hells Angels chapter down?

June 13th, 1979.

Oakland, California.

200 agents from the FBI and
ATF raid the Hells Angels.

Thirty-two gang members
and associates are arrested,

including Sonny Barger and his wife.

The Department of Justice announces
a total of 64 indictments connected

to the Oakland Chapter's meth
operation under the 1970 RICO Act.

They go after them for drug
trafficking, arms smuggling, attempted murder,

conspiracy to commit murder.

One of the things that Sonny
Barger is worried about early on

during this RICO trial is that
there's a lot of members here,

and that they'll start
flipping on each other.

Barger knows that if the
prosecution can convince just

one defendant to flip and
testify against the gang,

it could mean the end of
the Oakland Hells Angels

and a 20-year stint in prison for him.

But Barger has a plan.

He says, nobody's taking a
deal, nobody's cooperating.

We're going to be a united force, and
this is how we're going to win this.

The RICO case against the
Oakland Hells Angels goes

to trial in San
Francisco's federal building.

And the feds try to make their case.

And they have a lot of
convincing, powerful evidence.

They'll reveal the weapons that have
been found in Hells Angels hangouts.

They'll allege that
Sonny Barger has boasted

that he has committed
eight to ten murders.

On the stand, Barger's
testimony is convincing,

poking significant holes in the
prosecution's racketeering case.

Sonny's defense?

Yes, he's the figurehead.

But technically,
legally, by Hells Angels rules,

he really couldn't command his
fellow members and what they could do.

Any criminal activity a member
does, does as an individual,

not as part of the Hells Angels.

Things go from bad to worse for
the feds when they fail to convince

a single defendant to rat
on the Oakland Hells Angels.

As a Hells Angel, you do not snitch
on your own, especially, you know,

Sonny Barger's chapter, you don't do it.

As the trial goes on, the
defense gains the upper hand.

And that was really due in large
part to the brilliance of Sonny Barger.

They were not a criminal organization.

They were an organization
that had some criminals in it.

On July 2nd, 1980, the conspiracy
and racketeering charges against

Sonny Barger and most of his
Oakland brothers are dropped.

It's a huge victory for
the Oakland Hells Angels.

And they waste no time
getting back to business

and expanding the gang's criminal reach.

There's like 23 new
chapters by the end of the 70s,

33 new chapters in the
States by the end of the 1980s,

and a huge expansion globally.

This is a massive criminal
enterprise known for their brutality,

and so they continue to
be and pose a threat.

Sonny Barger didn't found the Hells
Angels, but he constructed the myth.

And I think the Hells Angels are
here to stay for a long, long time.