Transcript of #303 Mel Chancey - Youngest President in Hells Angels History New

Mel Chancy, welcome to the show.

Thank you, brother, and I'm excited.

Yeah, I'm excited too, man. I can't, I can't believe how many mutual friends we have. So last week I started getting texts from all my buddies saying, oh, I heard you're having Mel on the show. Oh, you got to ask him about all the stuff he's doing. Oh, he's got him movie coming out, but Blake Cook, Cody Alford, Ray Cash, Tulum.

Yeah, so many.

You baptized Cody, right?

Baptized Cody at, at, um, at our core military, uh, event, uh, our appreciation, our military appreciation weekend. And that was, uh, the last weekend in February.

It was about a year ago, right?

No, just this one that passed. Did this— that was this year? Just this one, yeah. Just a few months ago, the end of February. And Cody had asked me, and he said, I'm ready. And I said, you are? I said, where do you want to do it? And back of my partner Sidney Gordon's spot, he's on this big, you know, the Intracoastal 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 bull sharks 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, I want to do it out there. And I said, okay. So I was like mentally preparing, like he asked me the night before and we were doing it like at noon the next day. So I was like pacing around, was the first person I ever baptized.

He's the first person, first person I ever baptized, you know.

And it didn't— wasn't really sure at first, but you know what the word tells us, what Jesus said to the disciples, go out and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, right? So we're all qualified as believers. So I wasn't really tripping out on that part. I was tripping out on what I see Sidney and the boys catching out of there, right? So it threw me off a little bit, Sean, right? But we got it done. And we got some great video of it. And there was a lot of mud out there. We had another dear friend of ours, Colton Hill, that came out there to help me too because Cody's 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? But it was amazing. And now he's on the team. And he's on fire for the Lord. Cody's really— his eyes are open, Sean. And, uh, and you know, he calls— he calls— everybody calls me their big brother, whether they're older than me or not. They're like, 'Miles, our big brother,' because, you know, I look out for everybody.

But, uh, yeah, it was amazing. And, uh, so many people that we know— I was like, you know, it was an honor for me to come here and sit with you, man.

That's cool. That's— yeah, I was really happy to see Cody, uh, take that step. That was— that was awesome.

Yeah.

How was— I mean, how did that feel to baptize somebody for the first time?

It was cool. I mean, I made it through. I I didn't start crying until them two dudes did, right? Because I'm like, all right, you got— I gotta say the words here, and I gotta be— and there had to be 250 people on Sydney's dock because we, we were at our Military Appreciation Weekend that we throw, uh, once a year. We have a big outreach, uh, for, for our military, a CORE Medical Foundation, and, and we do this for our military. We raised $180,000 to, to donate to for our military men and women, and, and we, we teamed up with this company Beyond the, Beyond the Barracks, and, uh, that does, builds houses for our veterans and stuff like that. So we had a full crew there that were watching this. Everybody came out on Sydney's dock, and, uh, I was thinking, I hope this thing holds, right? But we went down in the water, and, uh, 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 here and say these words, right? And, uh, and it was just so cool, man.

And we all hugged. And then you, you see the videos of me running out. The— it was low tide, Sean, this was going on. And back there, you know, it was all mucky mud. And when I watched Colton take a few steps, he— well, he took one step and he went all the way down to his 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? I didn't want them to eat me out there. But, uh, It was an amazing thing. You know, I was honored that he had asked me, you know, that we became close. And, you know, through the years, he's been, you know, 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 outward, you know, claim.

How do you know when you're ready? I'm just curious. In your mind, when are you ready?

I kept praying, Sean. You know, I grew up in a very strict Catholic home. And my mom, all Italian. My dad was German and Swedish, and he called himself the Heinz 57. He had a lot in him, right? And, uh, but, you know, my mom, my two— I had two older sisters, so I was raised in that strict women Italian family. I was the only boy. So, you know, when you're in that kind of family, an Italian family, and you're the only boy, they spoil you. You have to get spoiled, right? So that's kind of what threw me off with all the women later in life, right? But, um, I had known the Lord and was an altar boy, and, you know, CCD and catechism, 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 fellowshipping with the Lord through all them Hells Angels years. But so when I got the RICO indictment and ended up in, you know, 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 what, Lord, I can't do this no more. I'm tired of crashing the 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 because when I came home from prison the first time, I gave him about 70% surrender. I, I left the motorcycle club, you know, we weren't doing all that craziness. I wasn't selling drugs anymore, but I, I couldn't get to give up the womanizing 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 womanizing thing took another toll because now I 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 nightclub in Chicago, right?

So, um, but I waited for— I, I got baptized in 2019, so I waited years. I, 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 it's not what's saving you, right? Um, and my relationship with the Lord was solid, and I went back home to Chicago and I had my 41-year friend Pastor Steve Trolio, who, who runs the Firehouse Chapel, um, his, his, um, kind congregation over there. I had him baptize me in 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 pouring concrete. Wow. Yeah.

Wow.

So that's how far I go back with, with him. And, uh, so I told him— we call him Trooper— I said, Trooper, I said, I would love for you to baptize me in your pool where I spent many years. Even as the Hells 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.

No kidding.

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, why are we praying for Mel? We're just watching him on TV. His house got raided again. They blew this building up. They shot these people over here. We're praying for that guy? And he told them, yes. 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, that they didn't want no part of that, you know. So he's been— we call him Trooper— he's been in my corner and 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. So, so I knew I was ready, you know, when I, when I asked him in '19. And that's when I told Cody the year before. At our military event the year before, Cody 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?" 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, you know, that night we got there into town and told me that. And he's like, "Let's do it tomorrow. We want to do it at noon." I said, Okay, so I had all them hours of thinking of, you know, that water, right? So like I said, I was more, 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 getting out on video, my DMs blew up.

Now everybody wants you to baptize them.

Yeah. And I, I tell everybody, I'm like, listen, if you have a pastor that you're close with, give him the honor. Yeah. You know what I mean? I don't want to— and I don't want to go baptize anybody just because they say, oh, Mel Chansey baptized us. I don't— that's not the right thing. Yeah. So I always say everybody's qualified, but if you have a congregation and you've been tight with your pastor, give him the honor. If you don't have one, then, then, then we'll revisit that and let's talk about that, you know, somewhere down the line. And me being in Florida over there and I'm on the Gulf side, right in the nice water, everybody wants to come down there and do it, you know. And then I married my partner Sidney. I married Sidney and his wife Jackie. And that was the first— I never did a marriage, right? I had to go online and get the— get everything done, Sean, right? And get the reverend card and everything. Like that. So, you know, they got married in, in the, in, in Boca Raton at the, at the courthouse. And I, we had, we had, um, we went on a family vacation in, in Mexico, and then I married them 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 right here. Like, right on, from the guy who never wanted a job, and now all this stuff was coming up. But, you know, I, it's great that I get to fellowship with people about that, you know, the baptism and and, and, and the love of our Lord, bro. I love that.

Yeah, that's really cool. Cody sent me that video like the day it happened.

He did.

I was like super proud of him.

Yeah.

And, uh, what a— like, what a just phenomenal human being.

He is a great— I call him a 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 Chancey. Catholic altar boy from Chicago, expelled from school at age 16, also a father at age 16, the youngest president in Hells Angels history. You ran the Chicago chapter over a decade in the outlaw biker world, front lines of a 6-year war with the Outlaws. Bombings, shootings, stabbings. Your clubhouse got hit with what you call the third largest bomb in U.S. history at the time. Your job in the club: show up with the ball peen hammers and do all the beatings. An ATF agent called you, in quotes, one of the true believers, one of the true believers that elimination of the enemy was the mission. Caught a federal RICO case, sentenced to 9 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 Jon Berthal and The Rock are making a movie about your life.

Wow. So, and I had to trim that down about 10 lines. Yeah. So, yeah, um, you know, I never thought I would be wearing so many hats later in life as I do now. And, uh, I mean, I love it. It's a blessing. Um, my grandgirls, 18 or 19— I'm sorry, 19 and soon to be 12— and two grand— uh, Michaela and Haley. My daughter, soon to be 40, she's lives in Gallatin here in Tennessee.

Oh, no kidding?

Yeah, yeah, she moved down here about 2 years ago. Um, we're gonna go spend a few days up with her before we— after we leave you. Um, and, you know, having her so young and then now seeing, you know, with the grand girls and everything, it's just— it's my pride. My, my wife Melissa, as you met, she's, you know, on the other side out there. And, uh, everything that I never wanted— I used to tell the guys in the club, like, You're married? You got the white picket fence? I just never wanted to do that, right? I just wanted to be that youngster running around, girls, and every, every city I went to, you know, being with the Hells 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 country too easy. So I was like, well, that's my call to stay here in the United States. But, uh, you know, traveling the way I traveled and, you know, with the women and, and, and the violence, it just kind of took me over.

And I didn't ever want that. Now I walk my yard in Florida with a white vinyl fence, been married for 16 years. My grandbabies are my life, my daughter, and, uh, and, you know, my partner via Core Medical Sydney, and just, uh, 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, um, you know, that Italian family, on Sunday we were always at, at my mom and dad's house for that Italian meal. You know, I might have had a different stripper on the back of 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-knit family, knowing that family. That's how I, you know, acted when I was, you know, with the Hells Angels, and that was my family, you know. But seeing what I'm doing now is, I think back and I said, only you, God, 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 from Mel. And they'd say, is it legal? And they go, yeah, of course. They're like, he don't want it. They would tell him, he don't want nothing Yeah, but he can be a consultant. They're like, he ain't going for it, man. If it ain't in the underworld, he don't want to touch it. And it's just the way I was, you know, in that life. So right on.

Well, before we get too far into it, we got a couple of things to crank out. So I got a Patreon account. It's quite the community. They're the reason I get to sit here with you today. And, uh, 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 in the world, what's your favorite? What's your favorite bike?

So I have to still ride. No, I don't. I gave it all up, everything. I haven't been on a bike since '04, since when I came— the indictment was '04. 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 recovering alcoholic, recovering, 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 screwed 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 on a bike and all of a sudden 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. 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. Them were our run bikes, right?

When we were 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 Shovelhead with ape hangers and a suicide shift on it. Hardtail. Just, you know, just an old school one. And that was my favorite. Bar-to-bar bike. Because you could imagine, at 300 pounds with the Hells Angel patch on and me rolling down the road, it was probably a sight to see, right?

I would imagine.

No, yeah. So that was my, you know, my, my around the, uh, 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 gonna go back to the old school. That's the bike I would be on.

Thank you. And then everybody gets a gift.

Ah, ah, thank you. 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— actually, this year— today is the 6-year birthday for the John 3:16.

Is it really?

Today is our 6-year birthday.

Congratulations.

Thank you. And, uh, so I have the shirt for you and the wristband. Okay. And I got to say this because how that got started is my 30-plus-year friend Terry Bollea, a.k.a. Hulk Hogan, bought me a book by a lady named Sarah Young, and it's called Jesus Calling: 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.

It's amazing because them dev—

especially her—

them devotionals are great. It's a morning and nighttime. So Terry called me up on a, on a Tuesday night and he said, hey brother. And I said, what's up, Terry? And he goes, hey, did you read tomorrow morning's devotional yet? And I go, why would I read tomorrow morning's devotional? It's not Wednesday morning yet. He goes, well, I 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 hulked up on me— he goes, because I want you to do it. He goes, I think this would be great for your following and everything like that. I said, okay. So I, so I put my, I put my phone on a coffee table. I want you to do it. Because he used to hulk up on me all the time, right? I 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 this. And that was it. And a couple of days later, I start looking through my DMs and I have all these DMs from these men and women, these brothers and sisters, saying, Mel, we felt that. That spoke directly to us. And it was just amazing. I was like, wow. And I called Terry up and he goes, see, I told you.

He goes, 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 IFBB and the NPC. So I'm gone a lot on the weekends. And so I do it Monday through Friday. Finally, the team asked, hey, could we get a name? And I prayed on it. And of course, the John 3:16 Devotional Team. And, you know, that's how that started. So I told Terry, you know, years later after that, I said, you created a job for me out of a guy that, you know, that doesn't like to work, right? We were always laughing because, you know, he never wanted a job. He became a wrestler. I never wanted a job. So— and that's how the team started. And today's the 6th year birthday, man.

Congratulations.

Thank you, bro. It was so cool. And we have another gift for you. And 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, uh, I, I think you're really going to enjoy this.

Oh shit. Nate and I are really close friends from Sons, and, uh, EOTech hooked us up. Huxworth, uh, brake on there.

We can get the suppressor for you, but this is the new Mark 1 from, from Sons. Holy shit, dude, how cool is that, bro?

Dude, that is awesome.

And obviously I don't know much about them, but, uh, Sydney is a, a gun, uh, advocate and, and, and, and is the smartest person I know with the guns that I see around, you know. And, um, he said this would be a great gift for Sean, and we put the, the John 3:16 Devotional Team on there, the Sean Ryan Podcast and Core Medical.

Dude, this is awesome.

That's a cool one, huh?

Thank you.

You're welcome, brother.

Smooth. Yeah, yeah, smooth.

Yeah, that's cool looking, man. You know, and, uh, 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? As you know, 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'd enjoy that.

So break that in 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 Alsip. Which is about 20 minutes out of the actual city. Um, born and raised there, strict upbringing. As I told you, I was an altar boy, catechism. We lived, uh, 10 steps from the church. I would walk out my back gate, take a right, and walk 10, 15 steps, and we were at the church. So I grew up in that. My, my mom and dad were very strict Catholics. My dad was a hard-working, uh, man. Raising, you know, myself and my two sisters. So my mother was at home.

Are you the oldest?

I'm the youngest.

You're the youngest?

I'm the youngest. My older sister Carol is 12 years older than me, and my sister Jackie was 10 years older than me, and she passed about a year or so ago. She had MS real bad. Sorry to hear 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 my baseball coach growing up. I played baseball all my life. Every, every time I went to a, 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, uh, and, and gave the communion out from church to the people that couldn't come to church and get communion, you know, that were, you know, older people and couldn't make it to church. So our family was real pillars of the community, you know. I was little Melvin running around to everybody in the neighborhood, you know, and grew up— I'm still friends with all the, the kids I grew up with, all the guys and girls that I grew up with.

I never— even, even through all the motorcycle years, I remained friends with all them kids.

No kidding?

Yeah, yeah. The girls I played truth or dare with, and you know what I mean, I'm kissing them under my mom's pool and stuff like that. I'm I'm still friends with him to this day.

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It's amazing. So I grew up, uh, grew up in the suburbs like that, and, um, I grew up a He-Man fan, Sean. I was, I was big into He-Man. Remember that character? Oh yeah, cartoon. And when I was young, I was watching He-Man, and I, I, I wanted— I said, I want to look like that one day. And I started flipping through the bodybuilding magazines at like 14 years old. My mom and dad bought me some weights. And if you remember, um, uh, it was— might 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 and, uh, for the basement. And I started, you know, working out, watching, you know, no internet, flipping the magazines, squatting and, and bench pressing and curling and everything. And then, so you're into bodybuilding at a very, 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 2-minute walk, and it was in an old barn and it was called Jay's Body Shop.

And the, in the, the guy lived with his mom and dad at the house He made this old barn an old school gym. I mean, it had, uh, um, um, store cover caps for weights and the old plastic weights like that, you know, pulleys through the, 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 a key, you could go anytime, right? And, uh, 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 part of this, this club called the Hells Henchmen that, you know, we merged with the Hells 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 in the day, right? But I did because I wanted to be big everywhere. I wanted to be that bodybuilding big, just big like He-Man and stuff like that. So I met them two, them two old— they were 10 and 12 years older than me.

How old are you at this time?

I was 16. 16, freshly kicked out of high school.

What'd you get kicked out of high school for?

I socked the principal.

You socked the principal?

The principal. So me and another friend got into a fight in school with another group of guys from another town. They were bussing them into our school from this other town, and, uh, 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, 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 had called my mom up, she came down, 4'3" Italian lady, you know. And, uh, 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, a strict family. My mom and dad were the best raising me, right?

It was just me being me. And I just jumped over that desk and socked him and ran out of there because I knew that the cops were probably coming, right, Sean? 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 concession stand, so they knew her. They're like, hey, Carol, we gotta— so they were there waiting for me, you know. Didn't, didn't arrest me, but I got expelled from that school. So I said— my mom said to me, you're— I'm gonna 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, you know, I was 16 years old.

She signed me out. So in the house I grew up in, 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 gonna lounge in the pool all day, cop some rays, get a tan, hang out with the chicks in the neighborhood. And 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 going to work. I go, for what? She goes, you're going to go work with your uncle pouring concrete. Oh, you're not lounging around the house all day. You don't want to go to school? You're going to go to work. So I started working and pouring concrete at 16. And back then, I mean, I was born in '69. I'm not great at math, but somewhere in the '80s, somewhere in there, '69, '79, '89, I'm 20. So yeah, mid-'80s, um, I started— I was making $9, $10 an hour pouring concrete. So I was able to buy my first IROC Z28. I bought a Z28 and I bought my first Harley because I liked bikes. I grew up with dirt bikes, so I bought my first Harley.

So then when I seen the— with the fellows 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 cutoff shirts and stuff like that. And they took me under their wing, Sean, 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, keep your back up like this, do these deadlifts like that. They just were two good solid guys to me that I really enjoyed and liked, you know. And it wasn't until about a year or so later that the girl that I have my daughter with, she lived in a town next to Elsop called Crestwood. It was attached and, uh, I, I was over at her house, you know, visiting her. It was before, before I had my daughter, right before I had my daughter. And, um, I 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 here?

He's 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, yes, that's his family's house. He grew up with us. Why? And I go, because he trains at this gym that I train at, and I know him from in there. They're super cool. So he come walking down, 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 called the Hells Henchmen. 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. That. And that started my journey with the tattoos. And I kind of looked up to John.

Do you remember your first tattoo?

Yeah, it's under here. It was a tiger.

A tiger?

It was a tiger, bro.

It was—

I got it, obviously, I wasn't, you know, at 16. I was built a little bit because I was already training for a few years. I was on the Natchez now. I have— I didn't touch any hormones 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, like, you had 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 ride and stuff like that.

So, um, before we get too far into the biker stuff, yeah, you had a child at 16.

60, I just turned in 17. That's a few months before my 17th birthday. So yes, later, later on in '16, um, in a very strict Catholic family. Yes, yes. And her family was very close and tight with each other too, so it didn't really go over good on either side. Yeah, with her dad wasn't the— wasn't the happiest, but here we were, right? And, and, and I told them, I said, listen, I'm— I have a job, I work, I'm gonna take care of my, you know, my child, I'm gonna take care of, you know, your daughter, and, uh, and we're going to be together. And that's, that's how I started. And I, you know, I poured concrete every day came home to her. And, you know, she, she had a job. She worked, um, at this big food grocery store that we had in our neighborhood. She was, uh, in the Butchers Union. And she was— I was 16, she was just turning 19, 2 and a half, 3 years older than me. So, um, we started that journey together. We got married when I was 20. We got married, and that only lasted a year because now 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 or come, come over and visit on the motorcycle. My mom loved all the fellas, the fellas 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 fellas would come over and see my mom at the house and she'd have 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 what, what is it—

I mean, how did you get that news delivered to you as a 16-year-old? You're going to be a dad.

Um, man, I'm trying to think. That's a good one. Uh, I, I remember she was late, obviously. She was late on her period, and, uh, 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, really? Yeah. Let's go.

Fear? No.

Uh-uh. I said, we're going to have a baby then. And back then we didn't know, you know, we didn't do the testing, a paternity test, or, you know, to see what the baby was going to be. We didn't know. We didn't know what we were having. So, you know, we had our little girl, named her Danielle, and, and just we're raising her together through them years, you know. And I say this, I was blessed because Jenny came from a good family. I came from a good family. So when I exited, my daughter Danielle 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 running 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, uh, stuff like that because I was already deep into what we're talking about.

So yeah, so I, I didn't— it didn't even dawn on me a second thought to, 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, not even any fear after the— like, during the birth?

Not a hesitation. No, Sean, was just— I was kind of stoked, you know. Like, I didn't— it ain'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, well, I'm here and I'm gonna 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 in the playbook of how to do prison time or how to do club stuff. But, uh, I was in the situation and I was able to adapt to that situation, you know.

Makes sense.

Yeah.

So let's get into how you got in the club. I know we kind of started— yeah, a little bit. So some guys at the, at the gym—

I 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 riding? Uh, when I was 16.

You started riding?

Got my first Harley.

Shit.

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 that were there and stuff, and just had a good time. Nobody was grooming me for nothing. Nobody. You were, you, you were supposed to be 21 to get in the club.

What was going on at the party?

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 a big— just a 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 neighborhood, about 5 minutes. So, you know, at 18 now, I had full facial hair. Now I was already getting jacked up and training. 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 look 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 fellows in depth, you know. The guy that was the president for the henchmen and all the, all the, all 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 president asking me, he's like, you want to come around the club, huh? And I said— his name was Jerry— and I said, I do, I do. I said, I think this is a cool thing what 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 Al— 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 were 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, getting ready to turn 19. He goes, you look older. He goes, so you're 21, right? And I go, yeah, okay, right? I go, okay, yeah. And then when we got in that room and they called me in to where they were having the 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 almost turning 19. And then they looked at Al and he goes, I saw, it's not his fault. I go, he sees me in all the bars and probably thought I was 21 already. I said, but I'm not 21. And they said, okay, well, you can't come into the club until you're 21. Like, we have a rule, 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, pouring concrete. I loved pouring concrete. Um, the boss I had, uh, me and him became very close. His name's Merrill Healy, and, uh, 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 pouring 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'd go home and, you know, shower off and go to bed and get back up and do the same thing. So not only was I building my body with the weights, I was out humping forms and pouring driveways 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 afford, you know, the, the car and the bike and everything like that. So now I go back to a party and I'm right, just getting ready to turn 20, 20 years old. And the one guy asked me, he goes, well, how old are you now, Mel? And I go, I just seen 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 a goatee and I had it long, Sean. I had it like this and it was to a point kind of like the wrestler Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart, because I was a wrestling fan growing up, a wrestling fan too, you know. And I had it pointed like that. And, uh, they said, man, you're down here, you come to the parties, you come and hang out. They said, uh, all right, listen, you're gonna be 21 here soon. Let's, uh, let's make it official. You want to become an official hang around?

And I said, I do. So I became an official hang around. 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 And I was only a hang around for a couple months, and they seen that, you know, my head was into this here, you know. And then I became an official prospect, and, you know, and at the time—

what does a hang around mean? What is the definition of that?

So the hang 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— I was outside watching the bikes while they were inside at the meetings. When we used to go to the bars, I would, you know, if a member went to the bathroom, I'd stand outside the bathroom making sure he was okay in there and He was going to get him when he was vulnerable. Same thing as a prospect, you know, you're just not officially a prospect. You do a hangaround status, you know, and that could last an indoctrination period. Yes. And that could last up until they have to vote on it, you know, if you become a prospect, to become a prospect.

So is it known? Is it known you're going to become a prospect?

That's your goal.

I'm a hangaround.

Yeah. You become the hangaround and it's your goal to become a prospect, then to become a member. And 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 hang around a few months, then I was a prospect. And, uh, at the time, the, the club, the Hells Henchmen in Chicago, they were having a little skirmish with another, uh, motorcycle club by the name of the DC Eagles at our club in Chicago. And it was just the, this, I say the schoolyard stuff, seeing each other in bars, fighting, you know, no shootings, no bombings, nothing what became later, right? It was just, just a little tit-for-tat stuff. And as a prospect and being young, I was out and wanting to be part of that. So I, you know, I remember being out until 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning with the fellows, going home, making my lunch for the day, and getting on my job site at 6:30, 7 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— learned what testosterone was at 19 from, from some of the fellows in the gym, and I started taking some testosterone and a few anabolics, 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 I'm, you know, I've been 5'10" since I've been like 16. I'm 5'10" and I started out, you know, by the time I was 18, I was probably 180 pounds with abs. I'd look like a, like a surfer kid, you know. And then I just started growing. The testosterone and the anabolics and the way I could eat and the way they showed me to train, you know. By the time I was 24 years old, I was 275 pounds. Just, you've seen the old pictures, just massive, 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—

hold on, what was it about— what drew you to them? I mean, I got a couple questions. Yeah, one, what, what was it about them that really drew you in? I mean, you're coming from a strict Catholic family. Yeah, I grew up Catholic. I know what that's all about. How did you— that brother— what did your dad to do.

My dad ran, um, 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 foreman, a, a boss of all this, this big warehouse. You know, my baseball coach, just work, 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, 1989, I'm 20, and I seen the brotherhood, the camaraderie, the riding the motorcycles, 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 enjoyed that. And they took me in, and I was, you know, I was like their 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. You're your brother's keeper, you know. Your brother's important to you, you know. You know, you got your brother's 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, even though the family was family. But now I got to see it with a 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 D's Eagle Club, and the next night they were out returning the favor. So I, 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 loved having me around because I wanted to run in and do all that first. I, I just seen it and, and got addicted to that. Okay. It was a 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, uh, 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, uh, there was no violence in the household like that at all. My dad and mom never were yelling 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— it just wrapped me into it. And I seen it and I liked it. And, uh, I always say I got bit by that violence and, and, you know, running around with the patch on and the womanizing and stuff like that. So And then right as I was, uh, right before I was turning 21, um, I became a 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 hangaround. What, what, what is it that you have to do as a hangaround 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'd be down here at, you know, 7:30, 7 o'clock, be down here, you know, being seen, getting to know the members. Through the week, guys would call me up and say, hey, we're going out tonight, why don't 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. What time you go to work? Yeah, 6:37. All right, we'll have you home by 5. One of them things, you know, just, just out running around getting to know the fellows deeply, you know. Um, and 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 of them, 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, why don't 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 hang around period to where they were like, hey, you know, we're gonna 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 got to be on beck and call, you know. If some members calling you at 2 in the morning and say, hey, I need you to come down here, my bike broke, go get the breakdown truck, you know, I couldn't tell them, ah, I got to get up in 3 hours. They didn't want to hear that. You better be there. And I was Johnny on the spot. I was, I was there. I just, as I was for work and just as I was for everything else, I 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 1 and 2-year-old daughter. And, you know, and she knew what came with that lifestyle, you know, all the nonsense, the violence, and the womanizing. 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, and the fellows. So she wasn't for that. And then when I seen that I was getting deeper into it, you know, and, and, and probably gonna become a member, that's when I sat down with her and said, you know, maybe this ain't 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, uh, put a tape recorder— I mean, I mean, I've shot a big tape recorder. Now they got them like this big, right?

I mean, a big old tape recorder with the cassette in it. She hid it under, uh, our bed in the house and recorded my phone conversation. Oh shit. And I was on the phone with a girl. Oh shit. Running around with a girl at the time, you know. So she heard that tape, presented it to me, and she goes, this is exactly what I knew was going to happen, right? And I said, I couldn't deny it. I was right in front of it. And I said, okay, I said, maybe it's best off that we, you know, part up. We'll raise our daughter together. You got that great family, I got the great family, and, uh, little Danielle's gonna be okay. And 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 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 sitting down with me and saying, son, you know, I'm never going to tell you what to do, he said, but you know, I, 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, and, uh, but I still had it together because I wasn't a member yet and I was still working my job. So they seen me still, you know, going to work, 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, uh, and, uh, 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, oh, it had to be about 28, 30 guys that were in that Hells Henchmen chapter in Chicago— 100% have to 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, uh, and then you fix things from there. And, you know, your sponsor would bring you up at another appropriate time. Maybe it'd be a month down the road, 3 weeks down the road. They'd bring you up for your— for your, you know, to be full member again. They'd vote on it. And, uh, and then I, I got the 100% vote.

Damn.

Yeah. And I was just turning— I was 20 turning 21.

You're in there when they vote?

You're outside.

You're outside.

They call you in the room.

What do they say when you get in there?

Call you in the room? Well, they kind of— they played like a little trick on me. So I got in there, I was— I had my vest on. And when you're prospect, you just have the bottom rocker. Ours said Illinois. And on the front we had a tag that said prospect, right? You didn't have the Hell's Henchmen in the center patch, just the bottom. So I came in the room looking around the room. They said, hey, they want you in the room. One of the guys came out and said they want you in their mill. They called me Road. They gave me the nickname of Road because One of the old henchmen, when he met me, I had to push his bike to get started. His battery died. So I— and he goes, hey, 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 you. Just jump on the bike, you know, pop it in gear, right? So he 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, is this short for Melvin? And I go, yeah. And he goes, kind of name is that? And I Well, my dad, and they named me after my dad. He goes, ah, he goes, you look like that dude, man, that Road Warrior dude. He goes, wait, was it— 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. He goes, I'm not calling you Melvin, I'm calling you Road. And that's how that name stuck.

No shit.

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 one of the members says, hey man, you know, 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, you are, huh? And they said, yeah. And I said, look, can I ask you guys a question? What did I do wrong? What did I do? 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, and send me down the road. And, 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, oh 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 in the center. We called it the Spook. It was a skull head with 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 went and got my Hell'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. Wow. Years old, you know.

How about that? Felt—

it was, it was amazing. It was amazing because, you know, it was something that I, 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 that camaraderie and the brotherhood, you know. And that started the journey there, and it wasn't too long, man, it was probably like a year, Sean, a year later, They made me the sergeant of arms.

Hold on, before we get into that, what— can you just give me a breakdown of a motorcycle club chapter? What, what is— what, what is the structure? What's the chain of command? 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 you know, the enforcer if you got to handle business inside with the fellows. And of course, you know, on the outside, you're the Sergeant of Arms, enforcer/enforcer, secretary, treasurer, road captains. The road captains' jobs are to make sure your bike's in running order, your tires are not flat and bald and 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, 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 him, 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 were out, 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, 5, 6 prominent clubs. So we'd be out and they'd be in the same bars as we were, and we'd— everything with us was security to make sure we were all safe in 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, wore some sap gloves. Remember the old— I had some deerskin gloves and we brought them to this tailor and the shoe leather guy and he put the the, the lead, uh, 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 not 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, the dominant ones, you know. So that structure to me that I seen with them was, you know, something that I really, really enjoyed and liked to see, you know. And 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 yeah, 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 Daniel's 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, uh, drinking and doing recreational drugs.

How many people were in 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 2 hours from Chicago. There was another chapter in South Bend, Indiana. Which was 2 hours east. So all total, I'd say there was probably about maybe 75, 80 guys in the Hells Henchmen and them 3 charters that we had.

What, what kind of backgrounds do these guys have?

A lot of military guys, a lot of former military guys, um, and blue-collar guys, working-class guys. You know, the president that was before me in the Henchmen, he, he He, uh, was a mechanic at a big trucking company, Mack Truck. He's a 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— in clubs, you know, blue collar though.

Gotcha. Yeah, I mean, I did, uh, this stuff always really interested me, especially, uh, when I started contracting. uh, for CIA, started looking into all this stuff. And 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.

Because nobody would fit back into society.

Yeah.

Is that—

that's 100% true, especially, you know, with the Hells Angels and guys were, you know, in the bomber squadron in World War II, right, in the planes. And you see, they had the Hells Angels, Death from Above they called it. And, uh, then when they came back in society and, you know, would live in the life that they lived and, you know, wanted to, you know, were looking to do that, they didn't fit in nowhere. And that's how the birth of the, the club side really became like that, you know. These guys started the, the club, you know, they named themselves the Hells Angels in 1948 in San Bernardino, California.

That's 1948.

1948. Is the birth of the Hells Angels in San Bernardino. They call it Burdoo, California. And, you know, so that was, you know, from the military, the Hells 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 fellas 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 now. I've been gone a long time, 20-plus years, but it's the same fellas, different neighborhoods, different spots, you know. You know, if I was, uh, maybe grew up in Tennessee, I would have looked up to the Outlaws, you know. They were down here back then, you know. So I just happened to be part of the Henchmen, and, you know, we'll get into that. We merged with the Hells Angels. But, uh, yeah, that was the background of all these guys, and it was all the same. I said we're all like, all unlikely manner, but that patch and that structure separates us.

And sometimes that blurred the lines of what, you know, you see now and became them big, uh, like to call them 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 backstories or anything, but it's just, I don't know, the draw seems very similar to what attracted me to the SEAL Teams. The tattoos, drinking, womanizing, bar fights, wars. Like, it's just, you know, it's all— it's the culture uh, is very similar for sure. And does it— do you look at people's backgrounds within the club? And, and I mean, how do you get respect in the club? Is any— does anything from a previous life get you any respect, or is it all within what you do when you're there?

Yeah, it's what— 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 the best SEAL, the best whatever you were at, you know, but they're going to judge you on how you are and how you act and how you are in the moments and stuff, you know. I mean, I've seen a lot of guys come into 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, I had a few personal friends of mine that are my dearest friends to today and two in particular. And, uh, you know, they wanted to come in the club. And now at this time, I'm the president, you know, and we've already merged to the Angels. But this story, I'm the president, and they came to me and I said this same for you guys. I said, you see the fun stuff, the running around, the women, the partying, and the red carpets rolling out to us, but, uh, you're not seeing when, uh, when one of our guys' daughters is jumping up in the casket rubbing her father's hair for the last goodbye.

And, uh, we laugh and joke about it to this day, Sean, with, uh, with my friend Jamie and Chuck. And I say, yeah, thank God that, uh, you know, God had his hand on us all. I said, because you guys would have been doing the penitentiary shuffle with me, you know, later in life, right? And, uh, you know, I've seen guys that not everybody is— could make that cut back in the day, you know. It took a lot of dedication, a lot of time. And, you know, being ready for what we seen was coming. I seen the, the big play coming, you know, especially when we decided, we all agreed that we were gonna merge and, you know, join the Hells Angels. And right in the backyard of the Outlaws, who's, you know, started out back in the day, and I think they started out in '35. Oh, 1935, Sean. Yeah, I believe that's their start state. Wow. And when they started— I don't know if you've seen the movie Bike Riders— that was all about, you know, the, the Outlaws. They were Chicago on the top rocker, and the bottom rocker said Outlaws. They only had— 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, dominant 1%ers Who were the, who were the premier outlaw gangs at the time? So the Outlaws, the Hell's Henchmen, another club called the DC Eagles. Um, we had, we had, there was a black club called the Hell's Lovers. Um, uh, there was a club called the Wheelmen, uh, the Hombres, which they got absorbed by the Outlaws later once we, once we made our play. And became 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. You're 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?

Um, I, I would 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, you know, um, intimately, right? I didn't get to know the Outlaws until later in life where I, you know, seen their structure. I knew that they were there.

So there's no like shopping around? You're not going to go to this club and that club? No, I'm just seeing which one I like better.

No, no, not at all. Because if they knew, you know, I was running around with the henchmen and being seen over there, and now all of a sudden I'm by them, I think you're a spy. 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 probably met them outlaws and, you know, join that because I liked what that was part of, you know.

Gotcha, gotcha. All right, so we see So you get patched in, do a 2 or 3 day bender, in a, what, a year or two you become the sergeant at arms?

About a year later, sergeant of arms. Now I'm an officer for the club, right?

What do you think got you that position? Um, so that's the enforcer, right?

That's the enforcer. Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, my, the size I was and, you know, could somewhat fight, and, you know, I wasn't, uh, Chuck Liddell at the time or anything like that, but I can throw my hands, right? And, uh, And just being around constantly all the time, and them guys seeing me in action from the prospecting days. And, you know, once I got my patch, you know, with— we were still fighting with the, with the D's Eagles back in the day, um, and, 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. Well, just describe the scene, what you felt, what happened.

So the fellas got jumped. I wasn't part of that one when, when about 4 or 5 guys got jumped by about 15 guys, and then they came back to the clubhouse, 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, 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 3 of these guys in here. They're hanging out in the corner laughing and joking, partying 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. We're gonna do this job, you know, this guy's gonna watch the door, you're coming in with us, you got the sap gloves on and the ball peen hammer, we're gonna beat these guys, knock their 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 you said okay, cool. I mean, you didn't grow up beating the shit out of people.

You got in a couple fights in school, now you're cutting phone lines and beating the shit out of people with a ball-peen hammer and fucking gloves with BBs.

Yeah, right, right. Jumped right into it, right into it.

No 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 brother, so we're out adrenalined up, you know. I'm on the natch, I'm not partying, doing anything like that. So I'm completely just full of testosterone, right? And, um, 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, to the bar, we were in a van, all of us in a van. So everybody kind of knew what they— 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, remember? So nobody was taking any camera shots, cutting the phone lines. Nobody was going to press charges because the biker 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 rein. And that was the first time that I got to feel that, and I in first with some of the guys. It was me and 3 of the other guys, and we rolled in the bar, and by the time these guys turned around, we already had them. They were in a corner, and the bar went like this, and they were up against the wall in the corner, so they couldn't get out of the corner. And we were just banging them in that corner, you know. And then this— to when we were leaving, when they were like, all right, let's go, let's go, everybody out, you know. I was the, uh, you know, newly in the club, and, uh, to look back and see that And then getting back in the vehicle and we were all like, you know, just that adrenaline rush and everything and felt that. And that just, uh, it took me.

How bad do you fuck them up? I mean, these guys going to the hospital, broken leg, they going home and their wife's putting a thing of ice on their face, or like, how fucked up?

Yeah, this incident here, they called the ambulance, had to 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 them in the head because we're not trying to kill them, right? Um, 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 incidence with this club, we weren't, we weren't on that, we weren't there with them. This was just the, the fighting, the getting each other like that. Mangling each other up. It never came to the shooting, the bombings, which we encountered later, as we'll, you know, as we'll get into.

But so is this pretty common? Or I guess— 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.

It—

well, or just not with us in that—

yeah, not with us in the D's Eagles. It wasn't to that level yet. There was no— nobody got shot, nobody— no bombings yet. 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 call them the hunts. All right, let's go out and, uh, 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 pager would go off, right? The pager days. A pager would go off and I'd look at and we'd— I'd get on the phone and the burner phone and be like, what's up? Hey, there's 3 of them here, girls, we're out, see ya. And we'd get in the— we'd get 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 hears 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 as we came in the bar. People knew who we were. The other club knew who we were. So we, we, uh, 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 gotta go.

Addiction to adrenaline.

Yeah. And just, just getting into that, that, that fighting. And that's—

you feigned for that?

I feigned for it. That's why I say 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, I, you know, where I'm at in life and what we're doing, and, you know, and the— by the grace of God and how he changed my life so much, 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, I get that dopamine back in my mind, you know, and it reminds me of them old days and how I felt back then. And as that young youngster running in and, you know, with that violence and the power and the everything we had. And, you know, by the time I'm in the club a 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 dude. A lot of, a lot of the bike clubs weren't bodybuilding. They weren't big like— there were some big farm-fed dudes, of course, and, you know, some, some crazy tough dudes, you know, that I wouldn't have wanted to fight.

But, you know, I had that aura about me, right? And, uh, you know, so I was, I was very well known now in, in this, in the city of Chicago of what I was doing.

Did you ever get your ass kicked?

Yeah, yeah.

Let's talk about the first time that happened.

Yeah, so we were, um, we were in this bar and, um, a couple of the guys, uh, 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 couple broke ribs. I think the one guy had an ax handle, swung, swung an ax handle or baseball bat, a couple broke ribs. And, uh, um, one, it was one incident where I was in a bar and I got knocked to the ground and they outnumbered us in the bar. And I remember holding on to the bar stool. I had my head, Sean, on my body was laid out, I was on the ground, I was laying on my chest, and I had the bar stool stool over my head and I was holding on to it like that so they just couldn't get me in the face, right?

I'm pretty fucking smart.

All of the bars still, 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-kickings like that, you know. But then as I got a little older and we got into what we ended up getting into, I used to say to the fellows all the time, I'm not getting hit in the face with a ball-peen hammer or an ax handle. So if the team comes in, if the other team comes in the door and we see them running in like that, I'm pulling out. That's, that's the cards we dealt. I'm not, you know— and later that happened, of course, you know, with the Outlaw work got so crazy that there was no more of this. I mean, we'll talk about that. That got into a whole nother realm of violence where nobody was looking to fight anymore, you know. But back in the back— to back it up, in that days, you know, I, I, I felt the ass kicking, you know. So I, I knew both sides of But it didn't deter me. I was like this as, as the sergeant of arms for the henchmen, you know.

It's interesting, I mean, you talk to a lot of the military guys, the soft guys, any— anybody that's been to fucking war, you develop this addiction to it. Yeah, the action, to the adrenaline dumps, to everything, no matter what happens.

Yeah, yeah, just want more, more, right? I think one more stop.

Yeah, you're gonna retire soon? No, just one more.

Yeah, one more.

You got 25 fucking deployments.

But, uh, yeah, okay.

Can you describe daily— like, 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, 6:30, 7:00 in the morning. Kind of getting taxing on me now, right? And I'm starting to think like, this is getting a bit— be a little bit of a burden here. But I need money, right? You need money to pay your dues. You got to be— you're going on runs, that costs money, right? So One of the fellows showed me the cocaine game, and I remember telling him, I don't know anybody that does this stuff. Everybody I know is from the gyms, and they're meatheads and stuff like that. They're taking steroids. And he goes, you'd be surprised how many people you know that, you know, do this, do the cocaine stuff, you know. So once I started selling some— 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 our mission. But I, I ended up knowing some people where I could I can, you know, sell a quarter ounce, an ounce, a couple ounces a week and stuff like that. Once I started making the money that I was making pouring 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, Merrill, I said, I'm, I'm going to give you 4 weeks, I'm going to give you a month notice, I'm calling it a day. And he goes, what do you mean you're calling it today? Where are you going to work? You know, who's stealing you from me? I said, I'm not going to work. He goes, what do you mean? Go, I'm gonna create a drug empire. And he goes, what? And I said, I'm getting 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, and I don't— I, 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, $1,000 a week, $1,500 a week— I wasn't Al Capone 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 I never— it wasn't never about the money to me, Sean. It's like today, it's like I look back and I say that all the time. God always had his hand on me even though I didn't know it. And you know how 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 their 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, as I was, you know, uh, in the, in the club. Um, different motorcycles, you know. Now I graduated from the IROCs to the Corvettes.

Now I had the— every year that I had the vet of that year, you know. So '91, I had a '91 vet. I need to, um, and, and making enough money to go live that 1%er 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, like I said, I just wanted to do that just enough to, to facilitate it, you know. So I ended up, uh, uh, you know, quitting the concrete and just running that, which made me being able to be out on 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, uh, we— one of the guys that was in the henchmen did some time in the federal prison with the Hells Angels out of Minnesota. And when they came home, they remained friends, and that's how we got to meet the Hells Angels because of them two guys' relationships.

Were they a lot bigger than you guys at the time, or were you bigger than them?

Yeah, yeah, they were a lot bigger than us worldwide. You know, we said we had the three chapters. They had chapters all over the world, you know, out of the country, in 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. Ohio, and then South Carolina. So that whole Midwest gap that was right there was all the Outlaws. That was all their, their territory. The Angels had never been into the Midwest until us.

Gotcha.

Yeah. So, um, so now comes that we're, you know, we're talking to these guys and going and meeting them, going on some runs that they were on, you know, some bike events and stuff, and getting to know this, this Minnesota chapter, and, and their guys and our guys and stuff were intermingling and talking. And then, uh, one day they sat down and they said, hey, what would you guys think about, uh, rolling the Hell's Henchmen into the Hells Angels? And we were like, yeah, it sounds pretty cool. I mean, you know, the Hells Angels, the number one—

they're just like that. You're like, yeah, yeah, fuck it, we like that. There's no— I mean, I would think that would be somewhat offensive.

I mean, maybe not.

They're a global organization. You've got 3 chapters. But 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 it to a vote. 2/3 of the majority wins, 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 Hells Angels, the number one, you know, the biggest club right back to back then.

And they were the, they were the biggest. Absolutely.

Yeah, most chapters, most guys, 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 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 and all through the Midwest and stuff, in Indiana and 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 clubhouse and presented it to us at a meeting, and we took it to a vote. And, uh, 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 Hells Angels, they just didn't give us the patch. We prospected with our colors on, our Hells Henchmen patch on.

You had to re-prospect?

We had to re-prospect.

Does that mean you're an FNG all over again? Yeah, they treat you the same way, or they— well, 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 Henchmen, or Hells 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, fighting constantly on different coasts.

What year is this?

This is '92. Okay, 1992. So '89, '99, I'm now in the club for 3 years. Sergeant of Arms for the henchmen, 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 know, if you guys make it in with us and you become Hells 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, but we thought we got it, and we were like, okay, we want to do it, and we did it. And, um, so we had a— we prospected for them once. Once we made it official and they made it official, then we started our prospecting period for them. We're in our own, our own jackets, you know, our Hell's Henchmen colors, but now we're really traveling.

How do you prospect? But they don't even have a club where you guys are at, so what do they— do they send some supervisors down or something?

That too. But we traveled to them. So you constantly—

cities?

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 the 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 party, you three go hit this party, 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-Eleven and bring it to Minnesota. They weren't doing stuff like that.

Okay, so it's like a respect thing because we were annoying. Like changing fucking teams in the MLB or changing services and, you know, from— yeah, 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, we would get back home, nobody would say, hey, we need you out here for 2 months. We'd go hit a party, go hit a run or something, and get right back to our home ground in Chicago, you know.

What, what were you seeing? So you had, you had 3 years as a henchman. So any buyer's remorse? Any immediate like, oh fuck, maybe we shouldn't have done this? No, they don't, they don't run it like we do. Our shit's better. Nothing. No, we liked everything.

We liked it. Yeah, we liked what we've 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, and, and, and we said we're all in for it. Like I said, the guys that, um, didn't want, they left. So now, just, just going back to my Chicago chapter, From them 28 or 30 guys that we had, when we made it into the Hells Angels, when they gave us that patch, 12 or 13 months later, there was 13 of us.

That's it.

Yep, 13 of us in Chicago, 8 to 10 in Rockford, another 8 to 10 in Indiana. Shit, that was the 3 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, uh, 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 henchman team?

Yeah, should we do this? Yeah, yeah, we, we, we, we were talking about, you know, what the Outlaws were gonna— how they were gonna feel and what we were doing and 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 whole, 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? So what is what I'm asking? Do you just like the bigger club, the bigger network?

Yeah.

The, the being a part of the Hells Angels, the premier motorcycle gang in the fucking world?

Yes.

Or is there other incentives?

Yeah, no, that— I mean, it was structured the same. We, you know, we've been structured the same, the same kind of mentality, but now we're part of the biggest motorcycle club in the world.

Okay.

And, you know, like, I remember sitting with one of the Angels And, uh, he's like, man, we're giving you guys the world. You guys are giving us the Midwest. And, you know, I remember, 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, are these guys ready? And 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 out that we're prospecting for the Hells Angels, the Outlaws 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 4 or 5, 6 other guys, 4 or 5, 6 of us. And, um, and they said, hey, we heard a rumor, heard a rumor you guys are going Hells Angel.

And And I wasn't the president, I was a sergeant at arms. So our president at the time said, it's not a rumor, we're prospecting for the Hells Angels. And they got up and pushed their seats out and they said, see you when we see you. And they walked out of that restaurant. And I remember like it was yesterday, I remember looking in one of their guys' eyes. He was from Janesville, 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 you. 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— there wasn't— 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 oh 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 Yeah, but here we are.

What the fuck were you guys doing? A 3-chapter motorcycle gang going after the biggest, the biggest gang in the Midwest?

Yeah, yeah, I know, bro. I look back at it now and I'm like, you know, I mean, I probably wouldn't have changed it, you know, that young version of me. If the older version I was saying would have sat with 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 and the Outlaws were— had that ongoing feud from, I think, 1970 on. And, and they were tit-for-tatting each other in murders 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 Angel way 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, uh, they came in and they killed one of our pres— the president that was the president of Rockford, Illinois.

By the name of Manny Mathias. Been a henchman for many, many, many, many years. Had a bike shop, drag racer, you know, um, just a blue-collar dude, man, and a good guy. I was really close with Manny as a young kid, you know, as that youngster. He helped take me under his wing and showed me that brotherhood way and everything like that. Um, 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 to one place. And, uh, and they sent one of their guys in there and, uh, and brutally killed him in the bike shop.

How'd they kill him?

Um, no, they shot him at first. He was behind the counter. One of the guys went in, and there were 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. Y'all, I bought some spark plugs. And when he came out and he was like, he's in there alone, you know, and they're like, if you can get him, get him, you know. This is all court documented and stuff because they got arrested. And he went back in, and Manny had sensed something was wrong, you know. He sensed something. And he was a big dude, man. He was a big workout guy. And when he came in and said, oh, he's out, these spark plugs ain't gonna work, they're not gonna fit right, fight, he pulled out a gun real quick and he shot Manny in the shoulder and in the chest area with a.45 caliber gun. Kind of spun him around, and when he came on the other side of the counter, Manny grabbed him up off his feet and the fight started. Manny was able to turn the gun around on him, but as he was firing, Sean, it was just going past him.

He couldn't get it up to his— shoot him in the body or the face, just firing it past him. He unloaded the clip up. Now he doesn't have a gun. There was a screwdriver on the top of Monty's counter. This outlaw grabbed it and stabbed Monty all through the, through the neck and everything. Shit. Bleeding out, thinking he killed them. So as he's going to go run out the back door, Monty's shop had them overhead doors, but he had pins in them and he couldn't open up the door. He couldn't— he didn't know where the pins were, so he had to come running back through. Is. And, and when the coroner's got there, by the time everybody got there, Manny was drained out of blood. So as he was running back through, Manny trips him again. He falls into Manny's blood, what's all over the tile floor, and he grabs another— grabs that screwdriver again and finishes the job off, you know.

Holy shit.

And, uh, you're, you know, you're gonna, uh, speak with Chris Bayless, uh, tomorrow, you know, and, um, you're gonna hear a lot more of the story from his end, you know. The retired ATF agent, but, uh, drained him out of blood there. Got out, got back in the car with the fellas, you know. Of course, they got out of Dodge and everything. They didn't get caught later until they took a RICO indictment, and, you know, some, some of the guys flipped and put the story together, right? But, uh, so Manny was the first one. So I remember getting that call, getting a page, 911, stopping at a pay phone, and, and the fellas telling Mani just— they just found Mani murdered at his shop. So we all jumped in the vehicles, got up to Rockford. The place was, you know, we couldn't get near the place with all the police presence and everything, and, but 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 Mani, who was, you know, the known leader.

You know, Mani was the one that pushing with the rest of us to become Angels. And, um, you know, up there in Rockford, and they had Milwaukee and the state line guys for the Outlaws, they surrounded him right there, you know. They had him, you know, they knew his play, and that was the first one they got. So now here we are, like, and I'm remembering what that guy said, like, see you when we see you. And I'm like, man, that, that went from— escalated from this, because there was a few fights before, just a few, you know, little bar fights with us and the Outlaws. Now, as we're still henchmen in, but that was pretty quick. We didn't even have our Hells Angel patch. So Manny was the first Hells Angel made. He was the first one. He got buried with his Hells Angel colors while we were still prospects.

Shit.

Yeah.

So the 6-year war begins, huh?

So it begins. Yeah. Yeah.

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You don't want to miss this on the big screen. That's hillsdale.edu/revolution. Welcome to Hollywood vs. Reality. They do it right. What does he do in the movies? Tell me if I'm doing this wrong because I don't watch any of this shit. Little flick like that, right? Seems pretty cool. It is pretty fucking cool. Gotta silence it. In another lifetime, I did gun reviews for a living. Proprietary fuckin' magazines, supposedly the best engineering in the fuckin' world. When that breaks, You're fucked. And now we're bringing him back. It does look pretty fucking cool, I gotta admit that. All right, Mel, we're back from the break. You just got patched over to the Hells Angels.

Yes.

And The war has begun.

Yes, buddy. Manny Mathias being the first of the casualties right there. Mm-hmm. Um, that had to be 1990.

And you weren't patched yet.

We weren't patched. We're not prospects. As Manny, as Manny happened, he was the first one. As I said, he was the first one to receive his Hells Angel patch right in that gasket. And, uh, You know, I remember that like it was yesterday because Manny had real long salt and pepper hair, big dude, just a guy who showed me a lot in life. And, um, uh, when we were getting ready to close the casket, we put the patch over him. We take his vest and put it over him, shut the— with the Hells Angel part up and shut the casket. And, um, it was me and a few guys up there And, uh, you know, his daughter— his wife was there— is the little girl, and she, uh, leaned over her dad's casket and she was rubbing his hair, crying, tears in her eyes, tears in our eyes. I'm just thinking to myself, man, we did this, right? We— this was a heavy feeling on me, Sean. I was just, you know, our actions did this. But when that casket closed and We started walking away with the fellows. There was hundreds of Hells Angels there from around the country, hundreds.

And, um, I remember telling my guys, like, let's give them one by the end of the week. Let's change 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? Than, than the murder, you know.

You know, what did the Hells Angels say when you guys reported that to them?

I mean, you know, we— 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, and for our brother. And we couldn't do it by this no more. That was out the door. The going in on the bars with them was just no more. So now we had to, you know, to pay it back the way, you know, the way they were doing it to us. Shooting of one of their guys. Their president got shot off his motorcycle on the highway, um, one of their, um, by, by a few of our guys. Got him on the highway, which we later came out in the RICO indictment that I got RICO for.

That was one of my predicate acts for, even though I wasn't there, but I, I knew what was happening. And, uh, I cleaned the, the mess up with the truck. I had the truck, you know, my guy's truck repainted and brought it to a buddy of mine's body shop and changed the color on 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, when the RICO case was getting put against us, we had some members that flipped for the government and told them the stories, right? So in my RICO case was just— it was a, it was a RICO conspiracy. I never got caught in any of the acts. I never got caught with any of the drug transactions. 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 card. Not get out of it, but less time for them guys that were cooperating witnesses against stuff that was going on in the RICO.

So how long after this did you patch over?

Um, we 1994, December 2nd, I believe, is the date, 1994, when the Hell's Henchmen became Hells Angels.

What was that like? What was that?

Yeah, that was, that was an amazing feeling, right? I mean, even though we lost Monty, and, and we, we did our patch ceremony at the Rockford Clubhouse. The Hells Angels came in with our, with our patches and stuff. We had people there that were sewing, sewing machines and everything like that. And we took them Hells Angels vests off, and I had a new vest and everything, and sewed the Hells Angels patches on our, on our stuff. And, uh, we were officially Hells Angels December 2nd, 1994.

What'd they say to you?

Congratulations, you guys made it. And, you know, and we— heavy feeling because we just lost Monty. Um, we were in his, his home, his clubhouse there. We did it there like that. Uh, 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 Hells Angels. And, um, you know, now, you know, knowing that this stuff is not going to change, they're like, oh, the patch changed, 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 death heads there with the rockers, and here we are, you know. The 3 chapters, you know. Um, 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 used to say to each other, we're not trying to go to prison. We knew it was there. I used to tell the, the new, the prospects coming in— not 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 arm, this 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, Mel. And I'd say, well, how am I, I'm the poster child here because now I became the president shortly after we patched into the Hells 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, of, you know, before that.

And I was bouncing all around, traveling around. I got real close to, to some, some New York guys.

What are you traveling around for?

For meetings and stuff now.

Okay.

Yeah, for meetings and, you know, being, being, you know, if they have officer meetings, you know, I was going as one of the officers, you know, taking the president to the henchmen, you know, going, me and him going together. I was a sergeant of arms. I was a security, um, meeting all the different Angels from around, you know. I got tight with a former, um, a former Hells Angel by the name of Chuck Zito from New York. He ran the New York crew. Um, I was going out to the West Coast all the time, you know, got to meet— got to, you know, know Sonny Barger and George Christie and that whole crew that ran that West crew, you know, the California crew. Um, the West Coast, uh, 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, uh, they had a legacy with the Hells 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, uh, you know, spot.

But, uh, yeah, I interviewed George Christie.

I did hear that. Yes, I did hear that.

I gave him one of those books we were just talking about.

Oh, you did? Good.

I hope he read it.

Yeah, not sure where George is at with his faith, you know.

I think he's close.

Yeah, I, I, I talked to George here and there from time to time still, you know, and throw him a text and stuff like that, you know. I seen him, uh, 3, 4 years back when I did John Bernthal's podcast, because John is up in Ohio and it's, you know, connected to Ventura there, right next door. So John got to know George from some gyms, so they surprised me with George coming on to, uh, to see me at the podcast.

Yeah, I asked him, I said at 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 one of those books and told him he doesn't have much time left, he better fucking dig into that.

Planting the seed, Sean. That's what we're supposed to do. Christ said to the disciples— I always say this— the last thing he said before his feet left this earth where he walked and touched, as you know, one of the last things he said to them disciples were, 'Go and make disciples in all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the 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 what we're 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— be— being beheaded in our faith, because that's what the— you know, it says in the end times, that's— you're going to either take the mark of the beast or you're going to stand strong. We're standing strong because we know where we're going when we're done. It's already won. We know we're going to, you know, be, be in that eternal paradise with this body.

A lot of my friends ask me, well, you know, because, you know, they're trying to, you know, con— you know, grab 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 don't know that, knucklehead. You know what I mean? I don't know if I'm gonna be 300 pounds, 150 pounds. We know we're gonna have bodies like when Christ walked the earth with all the disciples. We're gonna have these bodies again, glorified. No heart disease, no pec tears, 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 cool to hear.

Making an impact, bro.

That is really cool to hear. You know, back to Hells Angels.

Okay, so, um, so now you're getting ready to—

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 called up, hey boys, I got stuck by a train or whatever, I'm going to be a few minutes late. I roll into the meeting, They're all sitting there and the 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, an election. And he says, we want you to be the president. And 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 know you. And it's the perfect fit. And I was like, wow, okay, honored. And ripped the Sergeant of Arms tag off and sewed the President tag on me. And oh boy, that was—

how old were you?

20. Let's see. 24.

24 years old.

24 years old. 24 with that new title, and the first murder was done, you know, and 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 could see, you know, gets deeper and we'll go into it, but the Outlaws were not playing any games and they had a crew. Oh boy, they had a crew. We weren't dealing with some, uh, it was a pushover by, by no means, man. 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 4x, he got murdered. He was sitting out in front of his, uh, work. He drove a truck, big dump truck. He was sitting out in front of his work reading the paper, drinking a coffee, and a car came by and stopped and unloaded a fully automatic, like AK I believe it was, right into his whole head.

His jawbone 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— Manny's killed from Rockford, but now it's in my back, it's home for me. Just lost 4 of my— so, you know, trying to figure all that out and to keep our guys safe and to to move forward. We couldn't just hide in the clubhouse. We had to continue to hit the streets, do what we do, and being gravely outnumbered— I mean, we were outnumbered 5 to 1 at least. I said, I— we were 13 of us, 8 to 10 in Rockford, 8 to 10 in South Bend. Then we're 2 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 100 of them, it would have been a 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, do some the underhand stuff, the shooting on the highway, the, the, the shooting in Indiana. And we just had to— we had to do like that. It wasn't too much that we can, you know, we'd put some crews together, other Hells Angels would come in from out of town, and we'd have, you know, 60, 70 guys, and we'd 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 Manny and there wasn't another 4x4. And you guys are taking action against them, and 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 him, maybe we wouldn't. You know, if we ran into him 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, if that opportunity came up and you're going to shoot one to kill one, you're not going to do it, you know, with 300 people watching you. You're going to do that on the highway or in a backyard or somewhere where you can, you know, possibly get away with it, right? Right? So all that, all that was going on is I'm the president, and, and, you know, and now I'm the 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 at 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 the women. I needed the fix. I was a— I was an addict for all that, the girls, and I needed that whole lifestyle. So we, 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?

Is to make it to where there was no hell, that we couldn't be— there was no Hells Angels in the, in the Midwest anymore. More. That was their goal right off the bat, which is what they should have did, right? They did what they were supposed to do. We were the crew coming in, turning into Hells Angels. They had to get us immediately because why are you going to let us grow?

So what's your goal? Our goal— obviously you can't kill every outlaw, right? Hundreds of them, right? Yeah. Our goal, you guys, 20, 30 of you guys.

Yeah, yeah. And 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. You know, we didn't, we didn't, we didn't become the Hells Angels to sit in the clubhouse. Like I keep saying, we're just— that was our goal. So it was like we had a, we had a— it was a balancing act.

So your goal is to survive and grow.

Survive and grow. And not initiate violence against the Outlaws. We, you know, we were— we at first we were trying not to, but when they, when they brought it to that violent level, you know, there's, there's— they're keeping score in that one-percenter world, right? And if it just keeps happening on one side and they keep doing stuff to us, guess these other clubs are gonna join the forces and say, hey, we'll, 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. There was a 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. I— in the decade I spent in the club, I sponsored one guy.

Are you fucking kidding me?

One guy, Sean. One and I grew up with him 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 5, 6 guys that came in total in the Chicago crew.

Holy—

so guys weren't wanting to sign up on, on, on that, 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, after the war stopped and, uh, you know, I was gone and, and, and, you know, away for the first prison sentence and stuff, I came home and there was now a bunch of, you know, the truce was on and all of a sudden there's 5, 6 new guys in the charter and I'm like, huh, good to see us, where were you guys back, you know what I mean? And I— you can't can't take that stance, right? But, um, yeah, so it was— we weren't really grown, so our really objective was to keep ourselves safe and to go out and make that name in that 1%er 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 the Angels, we're here, we're strong, we're not going anywhere, and we're also gonna give it back to you.

So how, how are you gonna how are you going to make that name?

Um, you know, back through the violence. I say this, in that one-percenter world— and I'm going back in the day— whoever's willing to do the most violence, whether you lose guys to the penitentiary, you lose one to murder, or two, 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 to 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, did 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, 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 that we're in this position. I mean, a lot of us weren't raised like that, but, uh, you know, we adapted when we had to and, and, and, and kept that charter moving forward. And, you know, and, um, after, after the, the truce, you know, we sat down with them many years later and said, hey, Hey, nobody's winning here but the feds and the penitentiary 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 4 years was going. Shootings, bombings, murders, just, uh, turning it upside down. Janet Reno was the Attorney General of the United States back then. And they put a full-court press on me and 5 of the guys. They called it Operation Lucifer. They hit our houses through the midst of all this. 5 of us, big money spent on all this and stuff. And at the end of the day, 2 years later, I pled 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, 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 ATF and the full-court press later with the RICO. But, uh, you know, we were all, you know, everybody was jumping up and down. We, after all that time and hitting 5 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 specks off the mirror and stuff like that. The guns they had in his house were good. The guns— 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, uh, you know, I pled 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, uh, once the, once the, uh, the shootings really didn't do it. The murder of Manny, yes, they were, you know, we heard of course the feds are watching you.

But once the first explosive went off—

when did this first explosive go off?

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

How did it happen?

Um, they put 100 pounds of C4 in a trunk of a car car, shaped it, you know, they knew what they were doing, shaped it the way they needed to shape it, drove it up. We were on this busy street in, in Chicago called Grand Avenue, a busy street, a two-way street. It was like 5 or 5:30 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. A 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, bedrooms and stuff. And, uh, so they thought somebody was there. They were out sightseeing in the city, seeing the different sites 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 the surveillance tapes 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 the— their trials and stuff that that member, they drove that car, and they— 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 and drove it, you know, uh, 90 seconds down the street? Shit, right, Sean? Right. How about 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— yeah, you should have prospected him. Yeah, for sure, right? He was— man, he drove that car. I'd have been like, I'm not— can we just set the car there? I'll pull the pin, but I gotta So, um, and that went off on the middle of the week, 5-something, 6, 5:30, 6 o'clock in the evening on the busiest street. The 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 there, in and out of their clubhouse.

If that guy would have stopped, he would have been killed. That explosion, you know, obviously it went down first, right? I, I think the hole in the sidewalk was 5, 6 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 back door, cracked the foundation. Was an old Chicago building, so it had a basement that was under the the, the sidewalk, you know, the concrete, a first floor and 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 full of commuter people just went by like 50, 40, 50 seconds before it gets by, out of the way. The blast 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 feds said— to this day, I don't think it changed— it was the third largest bomb, the first one being Oklahoma City, the second one being the Trade Towers, but from the bottom, you know, when they blew it from the, the parking garage.

I said this on another podcast, and they're like, no, they were thinking I was talking about the planes. It was from when they blew up the Trade Center from the, from the parking garage. And then ours, the third largest domestic bomb yet, 100 pounds of C4.

Nobody got hurt.

Nobody got hurt or hurt or hurt, killed nothing.

Well, that was some piss-poor planning, man.

They thought we were in there, you know, fuck, and here and now, you know, knowing how the explosives work. And if anybody was in that clubhouse, I mean, it would have blown out their everything, their eardrums, their eyes. If you did live, you'd be miserable, right? I mean, that thing was, uh, when I, I got the call I was at home and I lived about 30 minutes from the clubhouse and 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, what channel? He goes, any of them. Oh boy. And I go, what? And I turned on the news and I seen Grand Avenue and it was an explosion that rocked the city, blah blah blah. So all my guys started calling me up and I'm like, all right, let's meet at the gas station, you know, we're on the corner where that guy did that. That. So we meet down there, it's all roped off, we can't get down there. And I'm standing out there with the fellas, you know, and here comes one of the federal agents and he comes down, he 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 watching it on the news, right? I said, what happened? Then an explosion went off at our building and did a pipe bust? He goes, no, Somebody put in a bomb on in front of your clubhouse in a car. He goes, who do you think did it? And I said, I don't know, you know, stand in 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? And he said, yeah, come on, we'll walk you down. He goes, you can't go in, it's a crime scene. I said, okay, let's walk down there. We walked down there and looked at the building and seen the door and the whole front of the place blown backwards in and And like I said, they didn't let us in. I was like, okay, so now Washington flew in. Janet Reno sent the whole team from Washington, and then they seized and 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. That. So we were doing shifts, you know, because they wouldn't be in there all night. 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 weeks, Sean, and then they finally hit us back and said, okay, we're done here, you guys can go in. And when we went in, it literally looked like the bomb. I mean, the place was just— this, you know, the upstairs had a big bar area with a band stage and everything like that. Nothing was left. Uh, the bottles of booze all knocked over. That concussion just blasted everything, ripped the stage in half, you know. The concussion went all the way up. So, you know, it was a mess there. And, uh, so that was, uh, that was the first one.

Are they sending any communications in, in the interim?

Who's that, John?

The Outlaws?

No.

No messages to you guys?

Nothing?

What are 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 in and the battery in my pager. I don't know this stuff, this explosive stuff. I said, but, uh, you know, when in Rome, now we got to do this. So we're trying to figure out how we can do this, the same thing back to them.

We're 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 2 goes off. They put a bomb underneath one of the guy's cars from Rockford, one of his trucks. Remote starter. He said we all had remote starters after that bomb. I had a Corvette, remote starter, looking underneath the car with a, with a mirror at all the spots, you know. I had it easy. I had a vet. It was low to the ground. These guys had pickup trucks. This guy Roger had a pickup truck. Truck from Rockford, starts it, remote starts it, all good. Gets in the truck, puts it in reverse. They tied it around the yoke. Bam! Do you know that the string goes off, blows him up in the truck? Shit. He lives.

He lives.

Dies a couple times on the way to the hospital. He flatlines. They bring him back to life. Veins pumping blood, the back of his legs all gone. That thing was right underneath him. We get the call. Now we got to go 2 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 hours around the clock because we're thinking they're going to come in and finish him off. So that was, uh, that was, uh, bomb number 2.

Shit.

And 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 impersonal putting these bombs and just, you know, walking away. And I mean, how are you and your guys handling this?

I mean, I would imagine you'd be doing some kind of counter-surveillance on the way home, bouncing houses, surfing couches, fucking whatever you can to make yourself not time and place predictable.

For sure.

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But in the meantime, I, you know, I still needed to be me. I couldn't hide in the house. That's what we were— 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. And you're, you know, you're pretty vulnerable when you're benching or doing some working out and stuff. Some dudes walk in the gym, they all knew where I was. I didn't, I didn't hide it. I was out. I had to be out. So they know where we were. So we were definitely trying to bounce through all that and figure out a way that we can, uh, you know, pay this favor back to him, you know, with the, with the second bombing that they did, you know. And, uh, and then that's what we did. I'd found somebody that, uh, was a former military dude, and we knew him very well. And, uh, you know you know, he was in another smaller club and wanted to become a Hells Angel. And, uh, I knew the background through some, 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 clubhouse?

And he said yeah. And I said, okay, that's, that's your gig. Get that thing done. You know, you still got a prospect, you still got to do your time with us because we don't want to put you out on Front Street all of a sudden, and we just gave you the patch. But, uh, Let's, uh, let's put a firecracker on 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— not 100 pounds of C4, you know, he made this one by hand. But, uh, then they got the message back, we got them too. So then that, you know, now, now they're looking under their cars.

Anyone?

No, no. A couple people were in the clubhouse from what I was told. Blew their front door out out their sidewall, you know. And I think they had somebody living back there that, uh, they took in, you know, had some concussion stuff done, um, from what I was told, you know, on that end later and inherent later in life. Um, and now that woke everybody up on their end now because now they seen that we were in the same playing field as them, you know. Um, yeah, it just Uh, it 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, uh, people that had our support t-shirts on. You know, the, the, the friends and, you know, that would come and buy a support shirt at the, at the parties. We never put Hells Angels on anything that went out to the public, so it would be support your local 81, you know, 8 being the H and A being the first letter of the alphabet, H being the 8th. Support your local 81 Chicago. And they started beating up the, the citizens that were wearing support shirts, you know, and, uh, I never wanted to do that. That. We never wanted to go take any— 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, 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 become outlaws. And, uh, we went and hit the smaller clubs right away because they were just, you know, Ama and Pa club that were enjoying life, riding their motorcycles without a care in the world. Now they're prospecting for the Outlaws. They weren't used to that lifestyle, that 1%, 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?

Uh, you know, just from all the street. We knew so many people. I would always hear, you know, what, what they were doing.

You guys are working sources?

Yeah, yep. Keeping people on the streets telling us what they're doing. Hey, they're taking this club over right now. These guys are prospects for them. All right, where are 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 more, and you're like, geez. 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-peen 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-peen hammer?

Uh, you know, the— 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-peen 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 3, 4 guys jump you, you pull out the ball peen hammer and you're swinging that across their jaw and stuff, you know, you're, uh, you're getting the job done. So we always had them ball peen hammers, the handles, fiberglass handles sticking out of our back pockets. I used to tuck it into a bandana so it would slide right out of my back pocket. And you know, you can use that at any time. And on top of— I had 2 guns in my patch. I had a.45 and a 9 that were sewn into to like that and a knife and stuff.

Just why a.45 and a 9?

I like the 9 back in the day because it held so many in the clip and it was fast. And that.45 was, was an equalizer, right? That thing would stop a truck, right? So one of the old school guys was like, listen, you got the, you got the gun with the, you know, that can hold 15. I think I remember back in day one in the chamber and the.45, the cannon. So I always carried two.

You know, what else did you carry? Uh, ball peen hammer, a.45, and a 9.

A 9, and then a knife, a sheath and a knife that I could pull out this way. One of our— one of the guys in the club taught me some knife, hand-to-hand knife stuff, you know, to where I— when I grabbed the knife for the first time, I had it like this, and I was like— and he was like, no, and showed me how to spin it around. And military dude, and 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 bodybuilders, they couldn't throw a punch right there. Ah, you know, you could see it coming from 5 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 changed the dynamics of the power around for me, you know. I thought I had a strong punch when I was just the meathead, you know.

And, uh, 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 because I became friends with some of them guys after I exited that lifestyle in the church.

What guys? The Outlaws? Outlaws.

I became friends with some. Um, so that, that, that thing was, uh, I think that was '98, I think, where we sat down and, uh, said let's, let's settle our differences. Um, 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 it too, right? And, uh, and they had a job to do, just like we had a job to do. Their job was to—

So you guys are talking about how you were planning on fucking killing each other after you got out of prison together?

Yeah, great. I know, Sean, it was crazy.

You got any, uh, Uh, did they have any surprises that you were like, oh man, that would have been a good one?

I found out this, and I found out this from Chris Bayless, the retired ATF agent that, uh, we have here. Um, and, and he interviewed one of these guys that flipped. So I, I used to hang out at this one strip club in Chicago Heights called Jimmy's. It's like my office. I was in there, you know, 5, 6 days a week. If I wasn't in the city, I was in the suburbs at this place. And 3 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 Mr. 187 on the license plate of my vet, which was the penal code for murder in California. I ended up getting that plate, right? And that was on my vet. Everybody knew my vet. And they were sitting in the 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 9. I'm not getting the.45, right?

So, um, and a Chicago Heights cop pulled up, and he pulled up in the lot and he stopped next to my Corvette. Well, he called me. I knew the guy from the gym, and he goes, hey bro, I see you're here. He goes, come on out, I want to see you and say hi. So as the cop's sitting next to my car in, and I come waltzing out the door, and the cop gives me a hug, and we're talking because I know him from the gym. Them outlaws see that and they're like, man, get— 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 in— when the interview, when 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 RICO indictment and I got to meet Chris. And, you know, he was telling me, he's like, listen, you, 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 my— I'm gonna go, you know, they got me right there. They all had automatic weapons and they were gonna gun me down right there. Shit. Yeah. Yeah, you know, and then later, you know, about probably 4 or 5 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 always— I always heard about. If you run into Tony on the street, you better get the jump on on him because he's prepared to go at any, any moment. He had that reputation. So when I got home from the RICO, I moved to Florida, you know, and rewinded a few years back. A mutual friend of mine called me and said he was sitting with Tony. And I go, I remember Tony. He goes, guess what?

I said, what? He goes, he found the Lord. He said he has a relationship with the Lord. I go, come on. He goes, 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, Jody, 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 was— he's been gone from the Outlaws for many years. And it was crazy to hear that because, you know, he told me, he goes, Mel, we were You were the guy, man. We had our sights set on you. We just knew we had to— it had to be that perfect timing. We couldn't just waltz into that gym. We knew it was gonna— what it was gonna be. I'm like, oh yeah, it would have been a shootout right on the spot. I wasn't— you know, if I would have seen you coming, I would have had to do what I had to do.

So it was surreal to sit with Tony and talk to him and hear his side of the stories back from that day when he was in the— he was the sergeant of arms in the height of the height of that war. So, and then he just passed. I don't even know if it's been a year, Sean. He passed from some lung cancer, but I got to be close with him. 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 a dude I liked and he seen a 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, He's— they're still in Chicago. I said, if your boys ever need anything, I said, please, Tony, tell them 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, I talked to his kids for every holiday.

Oh, that's cool, man.

Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of surreal to hear what, you know, both sides were— what was going on in our minds at that time.

I'll bet it is.

Yeah, man. Wow.

Wow, what are you guys doing for money? How does the club making money?

So the club in the hole, you know, does the club have to make money? I mean, it doesn't have to, but it's nice to have a treasury, right? So we would throw parties, tickets to 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, you know, a bear is a $2 donation or whatever it was. A mixed drink is a $5 donation, and they'd get tickets. Um, we put out a calendar every year. The Hells Angels put out a calendar every year with a member on the COVID I was on the 1996 calendar of the Hells Angels. I was on the front of the COVID And then every month in there would be a different Hells Angel from all around the world. So the calendars sold for like $30 a crack, you know. We've had that. So So selling the support shirts, the t-shirts and stuff like that, hats and stuff like that, trinkets like that. So the club was making money for the club as far as in our bank account. The individual guys, whatever they wanted to do.

I told you, a lot of the guys had jobs. Even if it was when we switched from the Henchmen to the Angels, they kept their jobs. That guy that was the president, Jerry, he kept his job at Mack Truck all the way 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 a 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 that, is that for you personally or is that for the—

for me personally? Yeah. So we paid dues every week for the, you know, the club to keep, you know, the lights on, the air conditioning running, the building and everything like that. And I believe the dues were $30 a week back then, you know, $30. We paid the dues and that went into the treasury. If guys had to travel, our, our expenses were taken care of from the treasury. But if you were doing something on the side individually, 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, so the club funds were actually— I mean, they, they were procured legitimately.

Yeah, not through illegal activity. 100%. Like I said, from the parties, the, the shirts, the, the membership dues and everything like that. Um, you know, that's, that's how the treasury was done. Nothing— the individual is the individual. I didn't kick a penny back back to my charter for any of my drug sales or gun sales or anything that I was doing. Were you running women with my— no, no, I loved them too much, Sean. I was, uh, you know, I was just into the being with the women and hanging out with them. I never— we never— none of us ever did the prostitution stuff at all.

What kind of drugs were you dealing?

Uh, I wasn't— I went with the cocaine. I had a cocaine source that was outside of the club. Nothing from, you know, they weren't members of the club. And the, 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, um, SKS Chinese rifles back in the day.

How would you get them?

Um, from a guy that was sourcing them out. You know, we were told they were falling off a truck, but we had a guy that, uh, pulling off the truck scene, we had a guy that was um, he, he got his hands on him, not in the club, an outside guy that I happened to get to meet. And, um, so we were getting crates of them, you know, and them kind of things were, were okay because one of the guys knew how to saw that barrel down on that SKS, from what I remember. So it was kind of a short, like a shotgun type deal, and you can hold it like that and shoot, 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? Uh, I, we had a site, a 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 in, I put a tax on them and sold the crates and stuff like that, you know. Um, I had a great steroid connect.

Who would you, who would you sell to?

I sold them to, uh, a motorcycle club on the East Coast, and they were facilitating them where they were doing the same, you know, same, same spot I was offloading the cocaine from.

You guys wouldn't keep any for yourselves?

Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah. We had a stash of, uh, an armory for ourselves to when we needed some stuff. Grenades, we had the grenades, 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 interference on them plans because they had the ATF agent up in Rockford that was prospecting for the Rockford Hells Angels, Hells Henchmen slash Angels at the time. When Chris got in, he got in when we were still henchmen. Wow. And they wanted to pull him out when things got crazy. Through the war, you know, when things— the bombings and stuff like that, they were, you know, were like, hey, well, hold on, we get you in here deep, you know. So we were— there was a few missions that we were going to do that we had all planned out to go get them guys. And, uh, 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 member says, hey, we're pulled over on 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, I will get to get the treasury together and see what's going on. I'll be waiting for your call. And he called me back like 15 minutes later, and he goes, they turned us around, told us to get out of town, go back 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 their— 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.

Knowing who he was.

Knowing who he was.

Oh yeah, 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. He was kind of older at the time. I kind of thought it was weird. He was in his 40s when they were telling me that they had this— his name was Grubb— that they had him up there prospecting. And I was like, how old is he? They were like, uh, 46 or 47. And I'm like, what's he having, a midlife crisis? Like, tell him to buy a Corvette. Like, does he know what he's doing? He's 40-something years old, he wants to come into this club on what we're doing? But that was Chris's in, and he knew Chris was the agent and brought him around and vouched for him. So he was previous because Grubb sat in the meetings So anytime that, uh, Mel and the 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 the sizzle reel 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. So Chris went out to Rockford to do the whole thing like that. So he had Grub that was coming out and saying Hey, this Chicago crew is on their way here right now to go storm that place and get everybody in there. So they got knocked down on that one. Um, uh, I know there was another incident that they got knocked down on. Uh, Chris will have to refresh your memory on that one. And then I was like, wait a minute, this is too coincidental. How are they knowing what we're doing? How do they know to knock you guys over on this— on the highway like that? Were they— are they following us? You know, it 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, they knew we were coming. They knew we were coming. Wow. Yeah.

What was the first time you met Chris?

Um, it Funny 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 him, to me, and introduced himself. Hey Chris, prospect Brockford, because that's what you had to do to the members as you were a prospect. You had to introduce yourself to 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. 4 of us on that RICO, uh, the morning, um, 2 Rockford Hells Angels, me and my sergeant of arms from Chicago, kicked our doors in. 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, undercover ATF 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 team is there, and there they're seeing Chris, who they thought was, you know, their prospect. So we get down, they bring everybody to the federal courthouse in Peoria, which was like about 3 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 raided my house at about 5:15 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 this thick, 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, oh 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. Um, so now they bring us in the courtroom. So we're sitting in the courtroom. None of the boys have been to the federal courtrooms yet, right? My sergeant of arms was locked up for the state. He wasn't to the feds yet. And I'm looking up at the, at the U.S. Attorney standing at his desk, you know, before we start the, the actual hearing. And I see the this a biker-looking dude, ponytail, beard. And I'm looking at him and I'm looking at him and I go, I said, hey guys, who, who's the biker-looking dude? I go, anybody know who that dude is that's standing next to— I go, that's the U.S. Attorney that's getting everything ready. The judge ain't 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? And 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, Mel.

Do 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, they were dealing with him, you know, they didn't know. And Chris got in and did his job and did what he was supposed to do, right? And got in there and infiltrated it and was able to put this RICO together. Because the agent that was working our case before Chris, this guy by the name of Ron Holmes, and, um, you know, 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 picture taker, and he had a million pictures. He, he had an obsession with me. He had a million pictures of me, parties here and there, but he 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 the head of it. And Chris will tell you the story a little bit better, but Chris— they got rid of him, 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 of years before us. He got in with an Outlaw chapter and he did an infiltration on them. Nobody knew, you know, we didn't know him, we didn't talk. They couldn't say, hey, this guy's a fed. They weren't talking to us, we weren't talking to them. So he knew the infiltration stuff with these— 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. And this first time I laid eyes on him. 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?

Who— from a distance, Sean. I was keeping— excuse me— I was keeping the, the family stuff 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, bopping in and seeing my daughter, you know, uh, visiting 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 You know, there's always an unwritten rule: no homes and no families.

I was gonna ask that.

I said, yeah, it was an unwritten rule— no homes and no families, you know. Um, you know, and, uh, it got violated a little bit on their end, you know. Um, they beat up one of our guys' girlfriends that was a bartender. They walked into a bar and surrounded the bar and took, took hold of the bar, and she was behind the bar, and they busted her nose, you know. And I think that, that brought it to home, you know. You're now— you're, you got— you're bringing the, the girls and the family members in and stuff like that, you know. So, you know, and, uh, we did that exactly back to them, you know. We didn't want to do it. The last thing I wanted to do was go to sock up some girl, but you brought us there, and, uh, I was the one that wanted to do it, and I was the one I did it.

You did it?

Mm-hmm. I did it to one of their— to one of their girls, and 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 gang, you know what I mean? Drive-bys and stuff like that. Was it going to get to that? It never did. 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, I went to the spot, and I always had this— this— they had this good chicken and steak there. Walked in there and, uh, I seen one of the Outlaws with his girl and his kid, and a kid, you know. I don't know if it was his wife, his girlfriend, but there was 3 of them and there was a little the girl and him. And I knew him, I seen who he was, and he seen me, and 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. I said, I know who you are. And he goes, yeah. And I said, okay, maybe you guys wouldn't do this, but get up, 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 roles were reversed, what would they would have did? Maybe they would have got me, I don't know. 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, 5, 6 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 in the the— if he was there by himself, Sean, it was on the spot, on site. That's— that was our rule.

If you seen 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 the good. If it was public and you had to get them, but get them. You can't be in the same room as them. And, and then 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. So I kind of had to keep all that separated with my— the girlfriends I've had. You know, you— we were talking earlier and you heard the story. I had multiple girlfriends that I— that were living in different houses, obviously different spots. And, you know, won a condo and stuff like that, all 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 gonna see me and say, hey, we're gonna take the shot no matter what.

And then here I'm telling their family or whatever, if you know that, you know, I just didn't want that on my conscience. So, you know, and all the guys used to tell me, you just don't want nothing covering your patch up, you want everybody to see who you are riding the bike, right? You don't want nobody covering— you don't want to, you don't want to ride nobody because you don't want to cover your patch up. But, uh, 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, I'm much older, but I just could not fathom that, this, 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 don't talk about it too much, you know. So I've been in Florida 11 years, and a lot of my friends out there now, they got to meet a lot of the ex-Angels that come and visit me, and they get to hear the road stories. You know, they know me as Mel, but they get to hear the road stories and stuff, and we tell some campfire stories, you know, sitting around.

And, uh, but, um, you know, it's nothing that I'm, 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 think about I think about Manny, I think about 4x, I think about Roger, who's still living. I believe he's still in the club, but, you know, got blown up in that truck. You know, I think about the violence that we, you know, uh, put ourselves into 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, this is my old part, right? And like, uh, like The Rock says, like Dwayne, we call him DJ, like DJ says, Mel, you, you have to go to that, that part of your mind to tell, because we knew you back then, to just show where you're at now and 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.

I go, yeah, I get it, I get it. And was hard. It was hard to get— for them to get me in character for that sizzle reel. It was hard for them to, you know, get that, uh, 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 hit out on somebody?

Um, I don't think it was really like, hey, or, you know, it was in a hole, right? Like, we didn't target get one dude from over there. We were like, whoever we can get, you know. Obviously the, the easier pickings the better, right? Manny at his shop, 4x at work. As much as they wanted to get me and stuff, I made it a little bit harder for them, you know. And people would say, I don't know how we— you were out every night. I mean, you can bring a thousand people in here and interview them, and from strip club owners to bar owners, if you had a diapetite nightclub in the city of Chicago, I was coming in with my patch on, with my crew. No ifs, ands, or buts. I wanted to hang out. I wanted to be in the street scene, the night scene. Then we had to hit the biker bar. So my life consisted 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 sleep maybe, you know.

But do you remember the first time somebody was killed because of an order you had put out?

Um, Well, this— I like to say it like this: the, 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, 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. It was being in like— we all had to pull our own weight. Out of that 13 guys, nobody was in the house feeding their cats and growing 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— our brothers were getting killed and you weren't going to just sit at home and, you know, uh, plant tulips.

Was the first guy that was killed the guy that got shot off his bike?

He lived.

He lived?

He lived. He Evel Knievel'd it all the way off an exit ramp and, uh, um, collapsed in front of a liquor store. And I believe— I think he got a colostomy bag from it. He, he was shot with like a third— a revolver, driving down the highway. It was a chance thing. Nobody was It just happened to— one of my guys was driving down the highway and there he was tooling 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 RICO. And, you know, and I said, do, do what you can do. If it's not too crowded and you can get them, get them. And then we all knew that mentality, you know. If we looked around and there was 3 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, uh, you know, he was the— he was the one that got shot up on the highway. And like I said, I ended up, you know, getting the truck back into a body shop my friend owned and getting it repainted because, you know, it was a Saturday afternoon in Chicago and I, uh, 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 happening from Minnesota, he flipped. And when he flipped, he gave that up. So 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'd try to get you for, you know, ordering it and then, um, cleaning the cleaning the crime scene up with getting the truck repainted and stuff. So as much as we were trying to cover every base of not getting a RICO indictment, 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 kickups there. But everything we did is a predicate act. And how I learned how the RICO 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 them with ball-peen hammers and stuff.

We, we didn't do that because of Sean Ryan and Mel Chancey. We did that for the Enterprise, which is the Hells Angels, right? So that's a predicate act. Even though we didn't get caught to beating— think it was a simple battery charge or something like that— that all gets wrapped up into that whole RICO thing.

What is RICO?

Racketeered Influence organized corrupt organization. Okay, it's the, it's the, 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 RICO indictment, and I, and I had a really good lawyer— my lawyer was my friend since I'm like 21 years old, he became a really prominent lawyer, so that's who I used. And I'm— and, and he's coming to visit me. We had no bond, they no bonded us that day. They were sitting in a facility, a holding facility, and I'm reading these charges and I'm like, I wasn't there on this one. I wasn't there on this. What's going on here? I go, this is, it's 2004. This is from '94, '95. So I'm telling my lawyer like, PJ, is this the weakest shit you've ever seen? Or what's going on with this RICO? Can we fight this thing? And he goes, Mel, there's a 10-year investigation here. He goes, I got, they're gonna give us over paperwork that's gonna fill, you know, all the grand jury stuff that's gonna fill my room. He goes, I gotta 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 3 hours down the road. And, um, so what's going on with all this? And he said, man, they got all these people, these predicate acts. Like, what's a predicate act? And he goes, all this stuff that you guys did wasn't for just the individual, it was because the, the organization is a corrupt enterprise, right? I go, what about all this old stuff? He goes, well, let me tell you how RICO works. There's no statute of limitations when they start the RICO investigation. On you. So what happened in '94 is just as good as it happened in 2004. And I go, what do you think the chances are with a 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 morons not for the last year or two, but you guys been bad guys for the last 10 years.

Continual criminal enterprise. He goes, I, I don't think we can beat this in a trial. And I said, okay. I said, well then, what are you thinking? He goes, well, they want to sit down with you and it kind of proved to 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, I, they, they, he was talking to the U.S. Attorney and Chris, my lawyer, was, you know. And he goes, and they, they seem pretty cool, Mel. They don't seem like they're to knock your head off or get you to go and hit, you know, trials all over and do all that stuff. And I said, yeah, I can't do that. Where are you going to put me? Poducah, Iowa, the way I look and stuff like that? Yeah, I guess I can't do that, you know. So that's when I sat down, and that's when they opened up the, you know, 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. Us what they're going to be able to prove. We're getting to see the grand jury stuff, who's going to take the stand against you. And, uh, and that's what it was about in there, you know. I got to know Chris from sitting with him, seen he was a, 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. And it was 10 years. It was— they didn't want nothing further. They just wanted the guys that all of us here basically We, we all pled to our own charges, right? So we did— we saved them the trial. We saved ourselves from trial because none of us were beating that trial. All you had to do is get found guilty under RICO of one predicate act, and that really cinches the RICO in. So, you know, um, and I had a criminal history. I was to the state joint already. I was to the Fed joint, right, back to back with the state.

And now I was home for 4 years, so my criminal history was high up on the federal guidelines. 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 them, screw you guys, you guys are taking me to trial, and lost the trial, I was sitting in the 20-year mark 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 co-defendants and making anybody Everybody, you know, I say this, not one person in that club had to spend a dime to call a lawyer for any— for what us three did or said. That stopped with us. The RICO indictment was 4 guys. It 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 3 more people in because of what the people said before them, you know what I I mean, and I never wanted it to go that way.

I didn't want to hurt the 3 guys that I was there with, and, 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 giving them nothing up that they didn't know. They had the whole indictment there. And if we didn't like the way it was going, we would have just backed out and said, hey, we're either going to take you to trial or I'm going to go plead to the judge just on my own, plead guilty, you know. You know. So Chris was always a gentleman to me sitting in them proffers, you know. It was always cool. And it was all done and over with when we got— I got sentenced and was heading off to prison. I thanked him and the U.S. Attorney. U.S. Attorney was by the name of Tate Chambers, and we lost Tate, uh, I think about 5 or 6 years ago. He passed, I believe, to some cancer. And he was, he was, he was a good dude to me in there.

You know, if they were in the room pointing everything at me and swearing at me and screaming at me and we're doing all this, you can imagine how abrasive that would have been. I would have been like, take me back to my cell. But, uh, 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 hurting nobody else. I didn't want nobody else to, to suffer over me, or, hey, you can get 4 more years off your sentence if you do this. I, I I just didn't, 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 RICO'd. I left because, you know, I— what happened was, I'll rewind it. In '98, I, I, I, I went away to the state penitentiary. I beat up a guy real bad that was beating up an ex-girlfriend of that I was very good friends with her and her family still.

And 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 years. She knew about the other girls. They all knew about each other. But Kendall wanted some more time, and I said, Kendall, I can't give you no more time. I got the Outlaws trying to knock my head off the shoulders. The Fed boys are trying to put me in the penitentiary for life. I can't give you no more. So on that note, out. Let's just, let's just remain friends. I love you. I love your mom and dad. They owned a big bar in our neighborhood where we all hung out. 5 o'clock in the morning, Joint Sean. Every hoodlum and every street person was in this place, but it was a happening joint. And, um, and I said, uh, choose your next dude wisely, please. You know, I love you, man, but we got to part our ways. Well, she got mad at me, and, uh, and She ended up dating this guy, and the guy, you know, at the time just, uh, he was a jealous guy and ended up putting 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 a street dude. They were a couple years younger than me, I believe. Yeah, Kendall's— I'm 57 now. She's probably like 53, 54. Him too.

To.

And, um, and I got wind of it. Her sister came and told me that, uh, 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 a Marine Marine, you know, celebrating the birthday every year at his bar. I mean, you know, and, uh, there's no way that she would let that happen. Well, it was the truth. It was happening. In. So, um, once we dug a little deeper into it and found out, uh, you know, I wasn't too happy with that. So I get in to a house where he was at and, uh, did a little work in that house as I, I like to— it's a very unique story. And me and him have a relationship these days. It's really bizarre, Sean, but it— the way it turned into. And, um, so we got caught in the house. Cops came in, SWAT team came in, kicked—

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I'd like to say, uh, I, I'd like to keep it this way. He, he, 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-Eleven. It was really cold out. It was December 16th. You know, you never forget the day you got arrested, and it was, you know, freezing cold out, 10, 20 degrees, you know, freezing cold club. And, uh, there was some cops in the 7-Eleven, and the guy said, Mel Chancey and the Hells Angels got my friend kidnapped in the house. We didn't know that the guy was gone like that, um, and, uh, I was getting busy with him in the house while they— while the fellows were packing up some of her stuff and getting some clothes together. And, um, you know, it wasn't until 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 get these guys out of here. And he came running back in and we looked out the— he's like, look outside.

And we looked outside and the whole street was just lit up. It was about 10 o'clock at night, pitch, pitch dark. They had spotlights on and everything. They had the SWAT 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 and stuff, locked, locked us all up, you know, brought us, you know, locked us up, brought us to the local their local precinct. And, uh, you know, we all said, hey, we'll get our lawyers and stuff. So about 1, about 1:30, 2 o'clock in the morning, hours later, I'm in one of the lockups that, you know, we're all separated. My two other guys, Hells Angels, were in the house with me. There was three of us. They're all in different, you know, lockup spots, you know. And, uh, I hear my name, Mel. And I kind of wake up. I'm freezing, Sean. I'm laying on this metal thing. I got my hoodie wrapped over me like a blanket. And I think I'm dreaming. And I hear Kendall's voice and she goes, Mel.

And I go, Kendall? And she goes, yeah. And I jump up. I go, what are you doing here? She goes, they came and got me from my dad, from George'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, Kendall, I'm sorry. I said, but, uh, it'll work out for you. They can't— you weren't at that house. They can't charge you with this like you— 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. Same with Kendall. So we were all getting ready. They were getting ready to take us to, you know, Cook County, the county jail. Now, no bond. So our lawyers get up there and they say, Your Honor, you know, they said— well, the judge goes, well, they found guns in the house, they found ski masks and everything. And, and, and our lawyer says, them guns were nothing to do with, uh, um, you know, my clients.

Them guns were in the house they were the guys that, 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 their 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 they set us a bond, a high bond. I think I needed $50 or $60K to get out. Fellas were right around there, $30 or $40K, like that. So we all get out Christmas morning. This is Christmas Eve. Our treasurer comes, gives the money to, to the, to the state. We all get out Christmas morning, like, I don't know, 6, 7 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, and, and fighting this case from the street for 14 months before we ended up getting the, the 4-year sentence that we got.

We got found guilty— we got found not guilty on the attempted murder, the kidnapping, the home invasion, because it 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 and a baseball bat and, uh, and some pliers.

Pliers.

Yeah. So, um, so that was my first time going to the penitentiary, and it was kind of funny because, um, I used to always say that to the fellas, you know, like, we're gonna end up in two spots: the tombstone or the penitentiary. Penitentiary. And as now, as I'm walking through these penitentiaries, I was like, boy, this sucks. I lost my freedom, right? And, uh, wasn't cool with losing my freedom. A guy like me, I was active, I was all over the place, right? Um, you know, I was, uh, 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 opened my eyes on things, you you know. So that's why I was— to go back to saying, I— when I was in that state penitentiary, the feds indicted me on a, on a, on a something they called mail fraud. I had given up one— I had an IROC Z28 at the time, and I had given it to two FBI agents. They gave me 2 grand for the car. I reported it stolen through Allstate, pocketed the money You would— if, if that's all that would have happened, I could have got him on entrapment 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 and guns. And unbeknownst to us, we didn't know it, and 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 him. I was doing some research on him with some mobsters I knew from Chicago, and, um, uh, 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 got the same shit. Go ahead, you— I don't need the money. You do it, you know. So they really couldn't get me on anything. Well, they, they brought me to this warehouse, and they had this warehouse and they had boats and cars and bikes in there, Sean, you know.

I go, what do you guys do with all this stuff? Oh, we put them in crates and we send them overseas. It's all stolen merchandise. And I said, really? They said, yeah, uh, Jim was telling us that you got, you got this IROC Z28 you're trying to sell, right? And I go, yeah, I got about 10 grand of tunes It's a pretty badass car. I go, but I don't know, nobody seems like they want to buy it, right? It's got a lot of stuff on it. And they said, well, we'll take it. I said, what do you do with it? They told me what to do. We'll give you $2,000. I said, okay, that sounds great. Okay. Well, I could have got them on entrapment, but I brought them some more cars. I furthered the crime, right? As I learned later in life what that meant. You furthered the crime. You brought them two more cars, right? So when I was in the state penitentiary, The feds came and indicted me on that mail fraud case. So I left the state penitentiary, switched handcuffs with the marshals in the Sally port, and they took me to my first federal prison in Pekin, Illinois.

I spent, uh, I got 18 months on that, and, uh, 85— that did like 13 or 14 months, 12 months, 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 where I couldn't be around any of the guys. If I walked in a bar and they were there, I had to 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 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, it gave me that time to reflect in them penitentiaries. And I, and I, and I got back my connection with the Lord. I was constantly in fellowship with him. I was running a prayer group, a prayer group in the state, in the federal prisons, lip reading the Bible.

Just getting into the word, right, into everything that I wasn't doing before.

Why did you get into it?

Um, you know, I— when I was in them penitentiaries and I was thinking to myself like, man, how did I get here, huh? 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— he's running the Hells Angels? No. You know, my mom and dad would be like, you know, um, and that's when I really— I had that time away. I got— now I'm out of the, the forest and I can see the trees, and I'm like, man, how was I living life here? My daughter, I'm not going to be around her. I'm just— did back-to-back penitentiary stays.

How old was your daughter at the time?

Um, let's see, 10. 10, 10 years old when I went away. Yeah, 10 years old. So, you know, and she would come and I'd, you know, a couple times, not much because they were crying, and I'd break my heart. And same with my mother seeing me in the visiting rooms, and I'm watching them cry, and it was breaking my heart 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 they were the ones crying and paying for it. You know, I'd 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, um, so I— all that was in my mind, Sean. It was all playing. It was like a movie I was watching. And that's when I, I, I got back centered and said, all right, Lord, I'm 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 and hits the streets 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, he goes, "Hey, you need a job now, don't you?" And I go, "I need a job, Frankie." And he says, "Okay." He goes, "Why don't you 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, Mel, I need you to 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 them all, from the Gangster Disciple leaders to the Vice Lord leaders to the street people.

Put a team of security guys together. So our nights, we— 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 a whole different lifestyle, right? And, uh, I think I said this earlier, you know, I'm like, okay, Lord, I'm home. I'm not in the club no more, not selling drugs, guns, shooting dudes off motorcycles, and making all these, you know, uh, violent calls here. I'm a pretty good guy right now. But the womanizing thing just— it, it advanced itself as crazy as it could say now, because now I didn't have the club taking up my Well, and you just spent, what, 4 years in prison with no— yeah, women, right? So now I was like, yeah, yeah, right, bro. Now I was like focused on, you know, my life, making legit money from the, you know, from the nightclubs, and, you know, a whole new array of women of the downtown nightclub scene.

So I was right back into the one after another, which was breaking my mother's heart because, you know, her and my dad were together since they've been kids. My two sisters were married when they were teenagers, and here I am, uh, mama's boy, out running around with every girl that passes my way, right? My mom didn't like that. My mom was like, when are you gonna settle down? I used to tell her, Mom, you raised me with so much love, I gotta pass it around. She hated that shot. I said, I just gotta share. Oh, could you imagine my old Italian mother? I'm telling her that, right? She's like, she's like, ah, she She's 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 reconnecting with her and seeing my parents all the 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 while I was on non-association. You have to— 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 to man up 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 were on me because the RICO wasn't yet. Chris and the crew were still trying to get this RICO indictment on me, so this would have They were watching me constantly to see if I 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, 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 in. 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. Speaking back from my day, if you were up to date on your dues and you didn't owe the club no money, hand in all your stuff, see you down the road. You're good. You just ain't— you don't want to be part of the club no more. We can't make you stay. If you force 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 don't never want to make a guy stay in something he didn't want to do, you know?

Interesting.

Yeah, I would not have expected said?

Yeah, what, that you can't leave? Yeah, yeah.

No pushback, 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 mom and dad's house when I was in the, in the, in the joints the first time. They knew I called up every night because every night I called to check on my mom and dad, every night. So my mom said, you know, he's calling about 7 o'clock, and 3, 4 of them would show up and they'd pass the phone around. I go, what's going on. Now we're over by Mom's. I'm like, yeah, they're like, we're eating pasta and meatballs. And you know, my mom was old Italian, made all her food by hand, you know, rolled the, rolled the sausage out and everything like that. And I go, nice, nice, man. They always looked out. They were— the fellas were looking out for my mom and dad and being over there and hanging out, you know. So pushback like that, that they didn't want me to leave, but no pushback like, you ain't going nowhere else.

That's— that doesn't happen in that world, you know. Yeah, some guys from some other charters called me up up and said, why don't you transfer hair? And I said, I'm not leaving because I don't like the fellow's hair. I just can't do this lifestyle no more. Gave 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-assing nothing, Sean, you know. I was down for the cause, whatever it took, you know. I meant that. The penitentiary, the tombstone, I was, you You know, I wasn't the guy that was like, all right, you guys are gonna 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 hard was that for you to leave?

Um, 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 to call them up on the phone and say, hey, before you see it on the fax 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 want— 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 knowing that I wouldn't have them relationships with these guys, because when you leave, you leave. You're not around no more. You're the afterthought. They continue to roll on, continue to do what they do. The club grows, the club— whatever they do, they're— you're just not a part, you know. Maybe if you go to a party once in 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 on war. How do you deal with that? How are you getting your fix?

Um, you know, after I left with that addiction, um, I didn't replace it with anything, I don't think, Sean. I just really was focusing on my relationship with my family and 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 And I didn't finally— I didn't know about the full surrender until the RICO, 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 nightclubs, you know. I was still getting my fix with the women and stuff, and, uh, I was glad to be out of that violence and that turmoil that I created around myself. I, 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 was stressed on the street because I loved it. But it is stressful knowing that the feds are trying to get you, right? Knowing the feds are trying to get you, knowing the, the, you know, the outlaws wanted me dead and the whole nine yards.

I didn't think I was on undue stress, but I was. And when I that 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, and, and praying that none of the old stuff came back on me. I didn't know what was going to happen in the street. Now everybody knew, you know, that I came home, the non-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 in, I believe, December. So I wasn't gone long, but it was on the street now. Hey, Melk with the Hells Angels, he's no 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 Outlaws didn't love me now. Oh, he's a great guy. No, he's not in the club. They still didn't like me. I always kind of look over my shoulder with that and wondering what was going to happen here, even though the, 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. And in that 2001 era, they were starting to go from '97. They were starting to now not practice the good neighborhood policy no more, and the good neighbor policy, and violating 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. And one of the outlaw 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 on that one. I don't have no ifs, ands, or buts about it. It's not my fight no more. I'm out. You have to deal with that guy, you know. I'm out completely. I quit. So, you know, another— by the grace of God, they just left me be, you know. And, you know, and, you know, being in that lifestyle, there's always the next, uh, new hit that's coming, somebody they're going to be aggravated with, you know, somebody's going to get your attention all the time in, in that life, right?

New club, this, that, it's always— you're gonna— they got enough fights on their hand, right?

Yeah.

So I was okay, you know. Yeah. Damn.

And then you went back.

Then I went back. Then I went back. Yeah. Then the, the RICO came.

How did that come in? How did that come about?

So, you know, we knew that, that it was lurking in the backgrounds through them years, you know, and thinking about everything that we did and, uh, through that, uh, war, you know, we, we— I always heard about it, you know. And, um, so now it's the, you know, the, the months of 2004, the summer of 2004, and, um, a couple friends called me up and said, hey, We got a subpoena. My buddy with the body shop, my good friend, he said, hey, we— I got a subpoena. I said, for what? He said, to go down to Peoria, uh, for a grand jury, something to do with a RICO case with you. And I said, okay. And I seen him and I said, hey bro, and I said, um, obviously they know that, uh, you painted this vehicle for me. And he said, I'm not going to go there and say anything. I go, you have to to. They already know. One of the guys flipped. I, I, I knew it's happening. I said, if you go and perjure yourself, you're gonna end up getting yourself locked up. I put you in that position. I asked you to go do that for us, and I don't want to see you get locked up.

I can't afford a lawyer for you too now either, so you're gonna have to go down in that grand jury and say what they know. Don't, don't catch yourself lying. And then, um, a couple months later, now it's a little 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 me up and I go, hey babe, what's going on? She goes, hey babe. She goes, I just got a— uh, the feds just left here. I said, what'd they want? She said, they gave me a subpoena to go down in front of this grand jury in Peoria. Like, okay, what's the date on it? She told me the date on it. I said, okay. She go— I said, 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. She goes, Okay, about 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, ah, the feds just left here.

Holy shit.

I said, what'd they want? She goes, I got a subpoena to go down in front of a grand jury in Peoria. I said, you did, huh? I said, 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, an hour 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, did the feds just come and see you? She goes, how'd you know? I said, seems to be going around today. I said, grand jury in Peoria? She goes, yeah. I go, 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 the— at where they were setting to get 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 I laugh about it.

I'm like, man, that was some dirty pool. And he'll laugh and he'll tell you tomorrow, like, it's just, uh, he goes, we were dying in there. He goes, when the guy— you've seen the guys walking by the room and looking in and they're 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 pole up in there and stuff. Like, they're all Mel'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 called my attorney up and my good dear friend PJ I was telling you about, and I said, listen, this is what they just did. And he goes, wow, Wow. He goes, that doesn't make any sense. He goes, what, they must be at the bottom of the barrel if they're subpoenaing your girlfriends, because I know you ain't talking to them out of school. I'm like, listen, them girls know what I have for breakfast, and, and, and, and that's about it.

I said, half of them never met any Hells Angels. I don't bring my stuff home. They don't know any crimes or businesses. I'm not sleeping with them, telling them our crimes that we're doing. Girls know nothing about me. And he goes, ah, it's weird. I go, what, at the bottom of the barrel here? This is their 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 we call that the dirty pool trick these days. You know, me and Chris laugh about it, right? And just crazy. You know, and I talk to them girls all still to today. Still remain friends with all of them. You know, a couple I didn't for a while that were mad at me, the Kendalls and stuff like that. But, uh, you know, I was able to go back in and later in life and say, listen, I, I ap— I had apologized to him 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%. 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? But then is now the RICO had come, right? You know, so they, they do all that with the girls. Now I know it's coming. I remember the conversation with my mom and having dinner one day, and because they subpoenaed my mom and dad too, they went and subpoenaed my mom and dad because at first they thought I was trying to launder some money through them, right? Because one of the Corvettes 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, through a, um, a towing company that I was doing some, um, like overseeing some like a consultant work for. But, uh, that guy just paid me in, in the check. I cashed a 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— the way to facilitate the way I was living, right? So they 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 him. I said, yeah, they're gonna end up getting this RICO on me, kicking my doors, and I'm gonna set up in there with no bond and 15, 18 months until, you know, we either plead or go to trial. I go, I see this whole thing coming. And my Italian mother, being the 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 goes, you had to know that was coming, son. I said, I know, I know, I get it, Mike. I'm just aggravated now because I know 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 tomorrow, but, um, in the morning they kicked the doors and I was with one of the girlfriends, with this girl Kathy, and, uh, and we heard the dogs barking next to her house at 5-something in the morning.

I said, baby, your neighbor's got dogs. She goes, yeah, but they shouldn't be out. And I looked out the window and seen all the black trucks out in front of the house. And I said, ah, and I said, hey, hey, get up, get up. I go, we're getting raided. And she goes, what's that? What's that? She had no idea because she wasn't with me through the Hells Angels days. This was when I was home from both prison sentences, 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 big businesswoman and stuff, and I'm at 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 8 or 9 wooden stairs that went down. Beautiful home, beautiful front wooden door. And I'm at 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 2 glass 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 robe. I couldn't even get it on my forearm, right? I was 300 pounds. So she throws me the robe. 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, 'I drop what's in the hand,' right? So I'm like, 'Kathy, open up the door! Hurry up, open up the door!' I didn't want them to smash the door in at her nice house, right? So she flies down the stairs. She's got that robe in her hand. She's taken. She opens up the door. We laughed 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 nightlight on behind me, but it's just dark, right? Dark outside. I got my hands up in the air.

I said, I'm unarmed, 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 down. They said, clap your hands together like this, put your hands behind your head, put your— like that. I said, okay. They said, walk backwards down the stairs. And I said, oh no, no, no, I'm not doing that. I said, I'm gonna end up breaking my neck, I'm gonna fall down these stairs being that big. I couldn't move like that, right? I said, I'm gonna kneel at the top of the stairs. So I knelt at the top of the stairs, kept my hands like this, and it felt like an eternity to where anybody came up and like threw the cuffs on me. It felt like an eternity. I'm thinking to myself, are these— what is going on? Are they going to come me. Well, come to find out later, Chris tells me, when we got to know each other, all them dudes got a case of homophobia. Nobody wanted to— nobody wanted to come up and throw some cuffs on me stark naked, right?

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That's better H-E-L-P 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 him, they're like, man, he looked like King Kong up there. They're like, he was up all these stairs, there was a light behind him, it was 300 pounds. All you seen was all this muscle standing there. They're like, man, 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. Couch, handcuffed me and stuff. And the guy goes, hey, you got some clothes here? And I said, yeah, just go in 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 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, 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 RICO indictment. We're taking you down to Peoria. 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, she's a businesswoman. 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 out of 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 ear, 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 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, that I was never going back to the penitentiary.

3. I said, D, I'm not going back. I'm changing my life. I'm done with this club stuff. I'm done with the misdeeds I was doing. I never blamed the club for 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. Changing my life. I'm gonna— we're gonna 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, you know, they had— we had a 3-hour ride to Peoria. They didn't let 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 AM. 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, well, I'm meeting my dad. My dad's getting ready to walk in from, 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 the phone, I called later that night after we got arraigned and she was at the house and I talked to her on the 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 commit no new crimes. I said, this is all from the past. I said, let my last predicate act on this RICO indictment was 1998. And, you know, I said, 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.' Damn. Yeah, that hit the hardest with me. So, you know, now it's, it's great because I got two grandgirls from her, and, uh, you know, and we're, we're as tight as could be. My daughter is a big believer, and she's out here in Tennessee, and I just have a great— her and my wife Melissa, and, you know, it's just, we have the best relationship with that.

So I, I just thank God for that. And that was my cleansing, John. That was the— that was me giving that full surrender. I'm telling you, when, when after we got that indictment and there was no bond, and now it's February of 2005, I'm sitting in this cold cell, you know, and then the marshals still are believing that, you know, I'm the Hells Angel leader even though I'm out of the club. And they all, 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 3 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 in that cell, and I was like, okay, Lord, thought this was all behind me. I thought, you know, me and you had 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 women. And I said, okay, I see.

I didn't give you that full surrender. Because when I told him, take the wheel of my life, I'm going to sit in the passenger seat— well, 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 wasn't going there with me, right? And so he was like, you want the wheel, take the wheel. So in that cell is where I really felt him speak to me. And I tell everybody, I didn't hear his voice. I just felt it upon my heart, and that's where I 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, and, 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 now, 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 giving him my heart.

I wasn't saying, get me out of here tomorrow, Lord. I didn't get the keys the next day. I ended up doing that 49 months, right? Um, but in total peace. I remember I was taking a nap and one of the cellies I had before, before I even pled, you know, this is probably 6, 7 months into it. I didn't plead later. I didn't plead. It was, had to be 14, 15 months until 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 cell, he said to me, man, wow, that's some peace, huh? And I go, what are you talking about? He goes, you're able to take naps and relax, and you're looking at this RICO trial or this RICO case you got going on. I tell him, yeah, I'm just giving it up to the Lord, man. And I used to pray and say, Lord, whatever you need me to do while I'm here here, you know, if you don't need me here for 20 years eating ramen noodles and Honey Buns, I would appreciate that. But your will, and I'm here and I'm okay with it.

And I had a peace that was just deep, Sean, 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's a couple times he came to see me and I was like, F these Guys, I'm tired of it. My criminal history's— I'm not pleading guilty and they're going to give me 18 years anyways. Screw that, we might as well go to trial. And I would get, you know, they'd hate— my lawyer have to talk 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 pled and got the time, and then I was off to the federal penitentiaries. 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 talked about the Lord if it wasn't for you, Mel.

And I mean, some hard dudes came in there because they said, we wanted to know why you walk around here smiling, peaceful, That's what, 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 to hear what kind of dude you were. Because, you know, when you're in the federal penitentiaries, there's guys from all over the United States in there, you know, all over. And, uh, you know, some of them got to hear some old Mel stories, you know, 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 bio study. Well, he wasn't back in the day, boys. Well, he is now. And then they'd come and talk to me. Hey, so-and-so, my— one of my guys knew you from the street, or was in this club, or this mobster knew you from this and said you were not a good dude. Like, 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, uh, 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, ah, the snowbirds are here, this traffic sucks. And she's like, yeah, beats sitting in an 8x10, right? And I'm like, it beats sitting in an 8x10. I keep my federal ID in one my, one of my drawers in my kitchen. Whenever I'm not grateful, I look at that and say, thank you, Lord.

You know, how was it reconnecting with your daughter? How long were you in there? How old was I? How long were you in? Was it 4 years?

Yeah, 49 months. You said 49 months? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, about 4 years. Yeah. Yeah, you're just shy of it. So then reconnecting with her, you know, I always talked to her in there. When I went off to federal prison, I didn't want nobody to come in and to see me. I just wanted to do that time. I 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, uh, my mom used to tell me, she's like, you know, Papa's not doing good. And I'd say, I know. And I'd pray, Lord, please, please let me come home. That's my only prayer. Let me come home and spend some time with my dad. Because I was, I was the apple of 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 fellas. The fellas would all come over and see my parents. I told you, he loved all the fellas individually. They just didn't like what we were about.

And, um, that was my prayer. And I, I made it home, and my dad passed 8 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 a crime, they got me for. 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 I met Melissa, my now wife, because my mom got to— because my dad passed in '08 and I moved Melissa from Florida to Chicago in '09. 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, and my mom has been 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 yet, I was with another girl I was dating, you know, when I came home from the RICO.

And I said— her name was Leslie— and I said, listen, I'm— I gotta go back, and, uh, I'm going back in and moving 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 nightclub stuff, you know. Um, but I told my mom, I'm not going to let you stay alone in this house, you know. I'm gonna 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— I— you have to move to Chicago. 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 penitentiary, you know, physically, you know. Financially, I, 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, um, you know, I was blessed to see— so my mom, of course, you know, got to meet Melissa in '09, and then my mom passed in 2019. They were best of friends, Melissa. We moved my mom to Florida in 2015. Yeah, she was there 4 years. So 2015, we moved her to Florida, and that girl out there took care of my mother like it was her own, you know. 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 babied her home, I say all the time, Sean, because she was such a believer. Believer, such a believer, and, um, loved the Lord. So, you know, I was blessed that, uh, I got that time. But yeah, that was, that was my prayer when I was away, just to get home. So, so reconnecting after I came home from the RICO. Now I had my dad, I had my mom, I had my daughter who's now older, and my daughter had birth to my first grandbaby, Michaela, 2 or 3 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. Um, my dear friend Jamie was bringing her down to see me in this— in, in this facility. I was about 2, 2 hours from the house. So she drops it to Jamie as we're going down there. She goes, Jamie, I gotta tell you something. She goes, um, I'm pregnant. And she goes, and I'm gonna 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 gonna tell him when you're with me? It's like, my dear friend. And she goes, yeah, I'm gonna tell him today because I get to sit in the room with him, in the visiting room with He goes, oh Lord, he goes, he's gonna lose his shit in there. And she goes, well, who better to be with than you, 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 out. What are you thinking, you know? And, you know, then it took me a minute to think like, okay, this ain't a bad thing here. So I came home and my oldest granddaughter was just a few months old. And, uh, so now I'm home fresh home and I have a new little grandbaby that I'm, um, have a new vision for. And I just became the apple of my eye. And I remember my daughter saying, geez, Dad, you weren't like this with me. And I'm like, yeah, look what your dad was doing when you were born and you were that age. By the time you were 5, I was already gone doing all stuff. Your dad wanted to be a gangster, I guess, right? So, you know, and, uh, and it's just amazing now. I said, I got them two grandbabies, 19 and soon to be 12, and, uh, the apple of my eye.

So, you know, coming home and reconnecting and doing all that. And I came back home to run the nightclubs again, Sean, when I, when I got out of the RICO. My buddy had all them nightclubs, and he said, Mel, you 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 not going to go pour concrete, and you know, my body's aching a little bit as I'm older now. You know, I was 41, I think, when I came over. Yeah, 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 to Florida in 2014, but 2012, I just couldn't take them late night hours no more, Sean. You you know, and, uh, and I was like, I'm done with this stuff, you know, and, uh, went to Florida. And then, um, you know, as you know, as I hooked up with a gentleman by the name of Jim Mannion, who, who owns the IFBB, the NPC, the bodybuilding 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 bodybuilding fan flipping the magazines, and Jim owned the federation, and I always looked up to to the, to the Dorian Yates and the Branch Warrens and the Lee Haney and stuff like that, the Mr. Olympias. And met a dear friend of mine now, Steve Weinberger, who owns Bev's Gym. He's one of our head judges for the, for the Federation. And just got close to these guys, talking to these guys, and, uh, didn't want a job out of them, didn't want anything out of them. Just, it was, it was great, great to meet him. And we just connected and stayed in touch with each other. Jim's in Pittsburgh, Steve's in Long Island, I was in Chicago. Chicago. And, um, uh, that's how I got— I ended up hooking up with Jim and, and to start working for him. And once I moved to Florida in 2014, and he said, why don't you come aboard with us, man? Mel, we all— we love you, we get along with you, and we're all dear friends.

And, and, uh, and gave me my first sanction to throw my first bodybuilding show, which now we have 3. Me and the wife have 3: April, August, and, uh, in December. We just had the— we just had our April 4th show over the Easter weekend. So that's how I got into the IFBB and the NPC and, uh, in, in, in my first really legal, legal, uh, career jobs, as I say. You know, I always say it was— I waited till I was 40 to get my first credit card and my first job. That's wild. Wild, huh, Sean?

I mean, so what, what is it, uh, when you say completely surrendered, let Jesus take the wheel of me. What does that mean?

Glad you asked that, because I, you know, me following you, and, um, you know, it's no coincidence that I'm here and we're going to talk about that, you know. And I, I, you know, the podcast, uh, you know, you're the one that I said I'd love to be on Sean's show. And of course the military, you know, as we'll get into what I do with Core Medical and what we do, we love our military. Um, you being 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 they, you know, you almost gotta— they don't even seem like they're following them or the conversation. But you go, wow, wait a minute, tell me. And I'm watching that, you know. And, um, um, I, I seen that. And that, that full surrender is for me was not asking for things my way, not worrying about what's happening 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, that is the, 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 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. If this was a right fit for the show, I prayed on before I said yes to, to, with, with Dwayne doing the movie.

Um, where does your, where do your answers come? How do they come to you?

Um, on my heart. Uh, and I'll give you an example, talking about the movie So I come home from prison, it's around 2010. I get a call from a book company, publishing company. Hey Mel, we want to do your life story in a book. Oh, you do, huh? Yeah, $100,000 signing bonus, $2 a book, make this thing a bestseller. Boom, boom. Okay, let me pray on it. Let me think about it and get back to you guys. Praying on it, praying on it. No interest, Sean. Nothing even sparking me. I didn't even 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, they're calling you up, you know. So I said okay. Um, 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. Just was like, yeah, I'm not interested in that. But I, I asked, I seeked him first, like the, like the word tells us, seek first the them, and all will fall into place if you're seeking, if you're seeking with an open heart.

Was this 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 let them fly in and see what they're talking about. I'm praying on it, praying on it. I have no interest in it, but I let the team come down to Florida to see, to, to, to, 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 biker 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, let's— no, no, no, we're good. Too late now. You got me not interested, right? So that is what I— when— how I know he speaks to me. I pray on everything. You know, and, uh, 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, we don't—' You know, his voice don't come.

He's not burning in a bush. He's just putting it on my heart, and 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, with Sid, who you met, you know, who gave you the gun, you know. And I didn't want a real 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, and I said, okay, Lord, if this is where you want me, 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 round ball into the square peg, you know. It'll just— you'll, you'll make it happen. And boy, he did. And, uh, 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 on everything. People go, everything? I said, no, not what I'm having for breakfast and not what sandwich I just ordered, but I pray on anything that has some substance, you know. The movie deal, the, the bodybuilding career, to, you know, where I'm at in, in life I pray at it all. I'm sitting here right now, you know, you know who this— my prayer is for this show, that, uh, you know, that people would see me and you here together, and, you know, as, 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 jeez, look where I was. I mean, I— Christ couldn't fellowship with me back in them days. He had to turn away from me when I was doing all that. He can't be part of that and living that sin-filled 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 to a lot of people in life, a lot of, uh, first responders, a lot of military people and stuff.

And people say, man, Mel, what a life you lived, hon. I'm like, yeah, but look at what God did for my life. 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, 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, and not by Dwayne Johnson and Jon Bernthal and Seven Buck Productions. It would have been told already. And, uh, you know, maybe somebody would have jumped on that book offer and that money. You know, $100 grand to a guy like me is 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 that. I pray on, you know, prayed on my marriage, you know, is this the right girl me.

And boy, 16 years later, I, you know, I'm lucky I can breathe air without— I mean, I don't know where we bank, I don't know what's in the bank. That's the truth, Sean. I— 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, there— but, uh, I don't let— she runs everything. My bodybuilding stuff, I show up and do what I do. She runs everything from, you know, setting up the, the, the, the, um, the convention centers to the, to the athletes' check-ins to the medals to the all that, the stages and everything. Little Mel does all that, and I just do what I do. So, you know, I, I, I prayed on it, and I know she's part of the team. The Lord brought me an amazing woman in my life, and I'm very thankful and grateful, you know, and 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 knocking me in the head, or I remember them, them 8x10s, you know.

You know, it's interesting out there, you said how many former— maybe, maybe you didn't say former, but just people in the biker community, biker gang, 1% 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. Amazing. After they seen me on Jon Bernthal 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, this guy's 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 can mention 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. His name is Tony, and, uh, he was, you know, a non-believer, Sean, a non-believer. And, uh, was scrolling through YouTube, loves John as an actor, and sees John, and he goes, from Hell's Henchman 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. Even though he was from Pennsylvania, I didn't know him personally, but them clubs didn't get along. Yeah, it wasn't— or the Hells Angels and the Pagans. Doesn't watch it. Says a couple days later pops up in his feed again. He's like, 2 hours and 30 minutes? I'm not watching this thing for 2 hours and 30 minutes. Beat it, right? Kicked it, kicked it to the curb again. One night he said he woke up 2, 3 o'clock in the morning, popped up on his feet, said, let me see what this bozo's talking about. And he said, as he's watching it, he said, I couldn't stop it and put it down, Mel. He said, and all of a sudden I feel this thing coming out of my eye that I didn't know what it was. It was a tear. This dude didn't cry. He goes, and I'm like listening to you talk about the Lord. And he goes, and I had this— it felt like somebody was standing on my chest. And then he reached out to me, Sean, in a DM on Facebook, and he told me that he watched my thing, and he told me who he was.

And, and he said, uh, you know, I, 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 fellowshipping with each other, and, uh, he gave his life to Christ, and he's an amazing member of the John 3:16 devotional him. And, uh, and I mean a strong believer. And I told him, I said, Tony, I'm definitely going to talk about you on this podcast with Sean because it's just by the grace of God that me and you are in each other's lives. He's been at my house sleeping in my house with me and little Mel 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? Babies, you, you didn't want to put them 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. He's like a brother to us now. That's awesome. Just one example. So, you know, I know that that's— they're not coming for the attraction for me, or hey, we like this dude's hair, or whatever.

They're getting led by the Spirit, and when they hear my story and something's touching them, to touch a guy like that deep down like that, you know. And, uh, 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, Man, we want to know that. We want to become a strong believer. I'll go back to Terry Bollea, 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. 6 years ago when he asked me to read that Jesus Calling, he was still running around in the Hollywood scene in the limelight.

Light. Even though he believed in the Lord, he was like, ah, I don't— it's not for me to put out. You know, some people don't want to put that out there, right? And, uh, and then that, 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 years of me and him being tight and fellowshipping with each other, and he used to always say, what do you mean, Mel, they'll know you by your fruits? And I'd explain the Bible to him. What do you mean full surrender? Now I've known you 30-something years. I know when you, when you had the worst of the worst. Used to come in the— come and see us in the wrestling matches and put your vest on and 300 pounds. And them dudes used to be like, damn, Terry, that guy's the real deal, huh? And Terry'd go, he's the real deal, boys. But he's my friend and we're very close. And Mel's a gentleman and I'd leave him with my kids. 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 wasn't ashamed of his faith no more. Now he's wearing the John 3:16 Devotional 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, for like 10 days because I was running around getting, you know, busy with work. And I, I get a call from some people and like, did you see this episode? And I said no. And they show me the thing, he's in the shirt, and they talk about me on the show and show when I rode around the ring with the Hells Angels, when we came riding around the ring and stuff like that with him and stuff. And, uh, 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, uh, watching him talk to Terry about their beliefs, and I'm watching Terry put it out there. And Mel's telling me about this full surrender, and I watched a 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 cool, man, right? No coincidence. Some, some young boy from Alsip who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago is putting these people in my life to do what's going on in my life. Yeah.

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Do you still read it every, every morning and night? Because I got the morning and nighttime, 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, and 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 Eileen, 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 intercede for these people. And, and we do that. So I still, I still read Sarah Young Jesus 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, and 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 story down. I've heard the same comments.

I don't give a shit what people say, right, bro? It does good for me. Half the time I read it, I think it's talking about me. Me. Amen, bro. I'm like, holy shit. I used to read it at the end of the day. Now I read it in the morning. I might go back to the end of the day because a lot of times when I read it at the end of the day and I reflect back on the day, I'm like, that was my fucking day.

That was it, right?

You know, and this month is all about— I think they do, uh, I think they have themes every month. I've had this for 2 years. I didn't read it every day last year. I was like, I'd put it down for a month or two and then pick it up. This year I've only missed a couple of days. Yeah. But what I'm noticing is in each month seems to have a theme. Yeah. And this month, I believe, is all about surrendering.

Trying to think of what this morning was. I mean, we've been going here for some time. I'll read it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it definitely speaks to you. And, and she took it, you know, right out of the— right out of— right out of the Bible, the passages that they're, they're at the bottom. What is today, the 14th? Today's 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 evoke praises to my holy name. Keep your eyes and ears fully open as you journey with me. At the end of your life path is an entrance to heaven. Only I know when you will 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.

And Sean, what are the passages underneath there?

I know they're written. This is, uh, Corinthians 15:20-23, Hebrews 6:9.

Yes. So them passages back up what Sarah wrote in that, the story, right? And, uh, not a moment too soon and not a moment too late, you know.

Well, so I don't think— I don't— is this one about surrendering? That doesn't— it's more about living in the moment.

Yeah, and trust in the Lord.

Yeah, but, uh, anyway, so when it comes to surrendering, this— 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 So there's this— actually, for the past 2 months it's been be in the moment, be in 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, you know, but, uh, I don't think about any of that shit anymore. Yeah. And, um, but the future, like, I'm always thinking about the future. Future. Yeah, I'm always thinking about how am I 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 gonna— just all the shit in life, you know, 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, uh, 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, yeah, that you want to be at. Sure. Sure, but if you don't live an ambitious life, then you, you won't— maybe you'll be in the mold.

I don't, I don't know. Yeah, I, I live in a— I have a lot of goals.

I have a lot of business goals, family goals, financial goals, every— I have a lot of goals. I just, I'm a very goal-oriented person.

Sure, nothing wrong with that.

Maybe there is though, because that takes away from what really matters, which is my son, my wife, my daughter, the 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 moment, stay in today. What is it doing you good worrying about tomorrow? I'm not saying that we're doing that when 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, and, and being 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 I'm worth $5 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, or I need to work, work, work, work, or I'm taking myself out of today. The Bible tells us be, 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 of the air. They don't store, they don't sow, they just— and 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—

I'm not, I'm not saying that means being lazy. I don't, I don't— you know, I used to be judgmental of people that are not 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 fucking hobbies. And I don't even know what—

I don't have any hobbies. Yeah, I have no hobbies.

I work and I spend time with my kids and my wife, and that's, that's about it.

Yeah. And I mean, you're successful, and but I— your relationship with the Lord, and I 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, your will be done, not mine, not I want to have that 5 million internets telling me about, or nothing like that, your will. If this movie goes, it's your will. If I'm meant to be on Sean Ryan, you, you— I was praying about it, you'll make it happen. And then look look at what comes. The team calls me and says, hey, everybody's— all these podcasters are calling, 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 gonna— you know, he knows. He blessed you with that family, blessed you with your wife and your boy. He's not— we want you to have all that time, but also wants you to be able to, 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, uh, and, and he's gonna move you around for that season. I never thought I would leave the club. I was the, the poster child, right? And, uh, but for a season He brought me in, brought me in different places, you know, and I see what he's, what he's using me for now. I'm being a vessel for him now to reach some of the hardest of hards, right? Some of the guys that, um, I love Tim Tebow. I didn't know him through his sports days 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, Man, Tim's not sitting at home right now. He's got a— 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 Tebow is not reaching the dudes that you're reaching, and vice versa.

Mhm. We all have a part we are doing for the kingdom, right? And, uh, 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 in my mom when she was living, and my friends, and I'm, you know, the Sidneys in my life and the Chrises in my life, you know, um, because I sure could be go, go, go. There's a lot of business opportunities that come to the 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 thank him for my daily bread, the blessings we have that we are sitting at right now. Riffs over our heads, families, you know, the blessings of that. 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— he's going to do something with that, that, 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. And 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 by your fruits? And I'm like, you can— I can say I'm the biggest believer in the world, but you, you know, I can tell somebody, hey, come pick me up, I'm, I'm at the Dow House right now with these strippers doing a line of cocaine. They're going to know you by your fruits. I'm not doing that stuff. I don't dip my toe in the pool, as I say, right, in the full surrender. And as long as you're— 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. We're believers. The Bible tells us when you call upon the name of the Lord, you shall be saved. Not if you go take this venture, or 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, wow, 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 word that, that Christ left us with, right? And we see a picture over here on the wall here, and it's, uh, 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 seen that when I walked in, and I— and it's— that's how many times. And there's just— you just can't replicate that. Like, um, Jeremiah said here when he had the Shroud, you could never make that happen again with any kind of digital laser prints or whatever, right? There's certain things that cannot be unexplained, right? And, um, you know, I, I think when, 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 tomorrows, we can't change tomorrow, 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. Your will be done. Give us this day our daily bread. Our daily bread. I'm eating food. He provides our provisions. We have a home over our, our heads and everything. He gives us what we need. What if Mel Chancey couldn't be faithful with $5 million? What if you put $5 million in my bank account? Or he didn't? What if, 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—

I do see that a lot through the show. I am affiliated with some insane wealth. It's crazy. People with some insane wealth, and, and they're not—

it's weird, you know.

I think it's like when people hit a certain whatever it is in their head, certain amount of wealth, they— I swear, I think they become their own God. They, they think they become their own god, or they— yeah, you know, I, I pay attention to this shit.

Yeah, they don't need them. Like Proverbs says, don't give me too little that I would have to steal to eat and 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— and again, to go back and not saying that I don't— I'm blessed that I have two amazing careers: Core Medical, my bodybuilding world, this movie thing coming up. I am blessed for that. But, you know, he gives me what he knows 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 I will just be comfortable right where I'm at. So I lived in an 8x10 for a long time. The 2,000-square-foot home I have in Florida with the lanai and the pool is 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 fence, 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 giving it up to him and seeking him first, you know. You get up every day your fellowship. And people ask me, how many times a day you pray? I say, I can't count that. I don't get out of prayer. The only time I end a prayer is, in Jesus' name I pray. We pray as if we're praying together. I'm praying out loud for somebody. I'm walking with them and fellowshipping 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 believing getting the memo. I'm on the phone dealing with different chairmen from around the country for the bodybuilding industry. Deal— me and Sidney dealing with different people. And sometimes these guys are on the other end getting jazzy a little bit, and my mind's going back to, man, I'd like to run into you right now with a ball peen hammer, you know. Um, and I have to center myself. I have to say, Lord, thank you. You didn't bring me this far for me to go screw this up right here, you know.

You take this situation, you handle this for me, Lord. You, you know, I have a lot of times. I was sitting in this meeting one time, Sean, and 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 a CFO? And I go, what? And they go, CFO. And I'm like, oh man, I don't know what that means. And there's like 8, 9 people in this room, and I'm like, I'm starting to sweat and everything. I'm like, I got to, I got to be honest with them. I said, no. I go, got guys, I don't know what a CFO is. Can you 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 looked at 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 makes 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 know what a CFO was, you I was fresh home from the penitentiary. I never seen a credit card. All I did was cash. So, um, you know, I always just say, Sean, we— 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 go— 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 was 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 is, you know, changing 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 us just to be thankful and say, you got me.

He's going to give you that time with your boy. He 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 what everybody tells me about you? Amazing husband, amazing father. 'Amazing man.' I don't, 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, this guy's telling me about you because I seen them on your show, man.

That's cool to hear. It's cool to hear it, right, bro?

You know, we're all play a part in the kingdom for sure.

See you later. World's tallest building.

What do you think, Sean? We're high. Hi, I'm Sarah Adams, the host of Vigilance Elite's 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 informed than you were before. Before you hit play. Terrorists, hostile intelligence agencies, organized crime— not everything is urgent, but this show will focus on what is need to know, not just what is nice to know.

All right, Mel, we're back from the break. Let's talk about about some of the stuff you're doing with Core Medical. Yes.

What is that? Um, Core Medical, a hormone replacement company, obviously for men and women. And, um, we've been blessed, Sean. Uh, Core Medical has been in business for 16 years, I believe, plus years. Um, but the last 8 and a half years, we've been really, um, had the blessing of working with our veterans. As you know, um, we were talking about it We're huge— my partner Sydney and myself and the whole team are huge into our military veterans. We're appreciative of it. I think I said I came from a whole family full of veterans and stuff like that. So, um, so we had the blessing of working with them. And, uh, so, um, we have something that's called our Core Medical Foundation. Every year we have our Core Medical Appreciation Weekend and Military Appreciation Weekend. It's usually the last weekend in February Military, where this, this past year we just raised, I think, $160,000 or $80,000, $108,000 for— to, to donate back to our veterans. And, um, just super cool to, to, to, to give back, Sean, to, 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 cool right now. We're just about ready to put the finishing touches on something with the VA. As you know, working with the VA is, um, for veterans and ducks, could be a little, uh, uh, taskful at sometimes, right? A little hard at sometimes, right? Then the VA— the VA— the 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 everybody who did serve, like, well, we will, right? So So, you know, we will. So 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 Core Medical for completely free, that the VA will— 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, uh, and if they do, they're doing it the completely wrong way. They're giving a guy some testosterone every 2 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, or no medications to run your FSH and LH, which is the hormones in our testicles, right? They don't know what they're doing with it, right? So Sydney's been working, and, uh, and, and And it's been our prayer and our dream for the last 8 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, uh, they were— you guys were talking about earlier. And, um, to, to get this done for our veterans, that would be so amazing that, uh, they would get this hormone replacement, the testosterone replacement, and getting it paid for from the VA, who, you know, it's, uh, it's, it's been— and that would be How cool. That would be really big. I mean, we've been working and working. It's been our dream, you know, for the last 8 and a half years, and we put some amazing people together on this team. And guys, you know, um, I can't believe the VA isn't paying for that stuff yet.

It's— they won't even, um— this is hearsay. I don't go to the VA. I haven't gone to the VA in over Sure. 10 years. Yeah, I'd rather just— I'd rather just, yeah, take care of my medical shit by myself and not have the VA involved. Yeah, but I heard there have been a lot of improvements at the VA. But, um, man, 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. For sure. Except the VA doctors. Except they don't—

they don't think that because they're like, you know, you go in the VA and the range for a man today is, uh, from— on your testosterone levels from 300 to 1,000. 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? 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, they're our strategic partners, from Tulam to Vincent Rocco Vargas to Cody Alfred to Nick, uh, cum laude, cum laude. Um, uh, we have a strong list of brothers that are our strategic partners who we 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 Percocet, take this, you know, and they weren't doing that. And we brought these, these, these men on and, uh, and watched the change. And with our outreach program, with our, you know, our CORE Medical Foundation, we've seen the, the, the brothers that we have taken and gotten their hormones clicking on all cylinders, as I like to they changed their life around, changed their life around.

And I see some guys that were like, we were taking all the medication that the VA was giving us, and we were coming home and we couldn't even pay attention to our kids. We had no, no, uh, life in us. We were just blah, you know. And, um, Nick, Nick K being 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 businesses he's run, and he's, you You know, so many people telling us we're working longer hours, we're doing this, we're focused. And that's what Sidney and myself, that was our dream, you know, 8 and a half years ago when we started working with veterans and the first responders, that we could get something done for them. And, you know, we have to jump through hoops, right? Every time we think we got to the top of the ladder, they put another step up for us. You know, Sydney and myself, 8 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 gonna do this for, for you guys and get your hormone replacement. We're gonna pay for it so we can see the benefits that's going on with your lives and stuff. And, uh, you know, the suicide rate in veterans, and then we— it's a proven fact through our doctors, through through the real-life studies that, you know, the suicide rate has 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 in 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 some guy to be saying, you're good, take a— take a Valium, you're good, and, you know, they're not addressing it, then that's what we wanted to to do. So we're so— 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 good effects that it's having with people.

And, uh, we will be so happy when we can make that announcement that, uh, it went through and that veteran will go right to the VA and he will get, you know, uh, his, his blood work done through us and the VA will sign off on that veteran 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 so close to that. It's, it's such a blessing for us. And, uh, and another thing we do, we have an outreach program scholarship. So, you know, I tell anybody that's out there listening, if you are through a hardship and you can't afford the testosterone replacement, DM me. Please, guys, DM me. 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? You just 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 veterans. When COVID was going on, we worked with anything, everybody. Sidney 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 called up 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're 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 kept them going. And, 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, um, And we trust our patients and we know that we're good with them and they're good with us. So we're very, um, we're very excited for that. And, 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, right on, you know, because, you know, as some veterans are, are, you know, some of them are down on their luck, right?

Some of them are going through some hard relationships. And, uh, we've seen it, and, and I know you've seen it in so many people. And having your hormones back to where they're supposed to be at the age we're supposed to be at, right? Uh, you know, I wouldn't keep my— you know, at 57, I wouldn't keep my testosterone levels at the top of the range at 1,000. I don't need that no more. Me, 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 what we're very, uh, pleased on what we're doing and, uh, in the direction we're going in. And, and our veterans mean 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, uh, let you know about that, you know. And, uh, we maybe we can get back on and talk about that because I would just help so many people out and change so many lives, right? I'm a believer, coming from the family I came from and the veteran family I came from and stuff, uh, 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 into 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 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 seems to me like it's upside down, right? I mean, without getting into a whole nother 4 hours of topic, right? But, uh, you know, so that's what, uh, we've been working so strongly on that, and we're so pleased on where we're at and excited to, to be able to make that announcement.

It's— we're so close, and if we can get this done, it'll be, it'll be a game changer for for, for our veterans to come in and being, being taken care of and appreciated. And that's what it's all about for Sydney and myself when we have these military weekends. And to see the families come and to see the kids of the families come and watching this one, this one, this one family that got one of the houses and just watching them tear up there, it just, man, it's, it tears me up, but it just, it's, it makes me smile inside. Like, like that we're making a difference and we're helping our brothers and sisters out that looked out for us, right? And, uh, 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 and the sacrifices and coming home and some of these men and women having PTSD and going through what they're going true.

We talked about Cody Alfred, right? Do you know Cody'd be the first one to come on here and say, man, he's— he was in some dark places, you know, and, uh, 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, he's got businesses and, you know, his relationship with the Lord. And, you know, he wasn't doing that a handful of 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 8 and a half years ago if we could have got into the VA and, and turned them around and got them 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, uh, I'm very excited for the future of that, you know.

How about this movie? Wow, is that happening?

So, um, we are in the stage right now where they are talking to some writers Right? Um, you know, of course, Dwayne's relationship with The Rock's relationship, John's relationship with so many writers and, uh, movie studios and stuff like that. So, um, you know, they got the best of the best, you know. Um, almost 7 years ago when we started this, I remembered, uh, Dwayne telling me, "I'm gonna put the A-team together for you." And, uh, you know, I had no doubt in my mind that he was going to put the A-team together, and he sure did, you know. And and, um, 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 just want the viewers to know something about you. He goes, you know, you didn't chase this. He goes, I did. Meaning him. He goes, I did. He goes, we talked on the phone. We knew each other through a bunch of mutual friends, you know, and a bunch of mutual friends like me and you did do. And, um, and when he said that, you you know, how much of this 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, and 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, and you trusted in me. And, uh, and he goes, and, uh, here we are today. And he goes, you know, that says a lot, he said, Mel, for you. He goes, because some, a lot of guys in your position would like, call this guy up, I got a story. Call this guy up, I got a story. And, you know, funny stories that, that them guys tell me is, just sit in 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, Mel. And 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, um, super exciting. Um, the writer phase is, is coming up next, you know.

And, uh, you know, with this stuff, it's, it's a little bit of a process, right? We We tell it organically. We put it together and on our timing, no rush. And, you know, we have a home which we'll talk about it at another time. 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 know, the movie could be, you know, creating it, filming? And I think like by this time next year, I think that that we'll be, uh, we could be in the filming process, filming the movie, man, which should be good. That's exciting. Yeah, it's exciting because, you know, I'm obviously a consultant on the movie, and, um, we'll be on the sets with, with everybody, you know, and, uh, you know, going over the parts and everything like that. So I'm, I'm definitely looking forward to that. And of course, you know, you know, getting that time with, with Dwayne and with John and stuff, and, uh, 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, um, uh, when DJ, when he said, hey, I got the perfect guy that could play, and, you know, and he said John Bernthal, you know, he did that movie with them, uh, Snitch, you know, where he was in there with John. And, uh, and when he picked John and we were talking about— I laughed and he goes, what are you laughing about? He goes, oh, you know everybody, Mel. You know him? 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 Sidney's brother-in-law. And, uh, he was just shaking his head. And, uh, so we were like, we're not going to get an A-list actor that's going to be 290 lbs, right? We always said that from the beginning of the story. And, and Dwayne's like, I got to put my mind to this and think of the perfect guy. So we, we call John up, we tell John the story, and I've already known him now through, through Sidney and the family. And, uh, we get John on the phone and we're all on a, on a three-way call with the team.

And, uh, and Dwayne 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 John goes, 10, 12 pounds? I'm talking 30, 40 pounds. And I said, well, John, we're not trying to kill you. You gotta live to play me, right? We can't, we can't kill you, you I said, uh, it's gonna be hard to get that kind of muscle, you know. You know, you're not a young kid anymore, but, uh, but we'll definitely, um, with me training them and, and him eating the way he needs to 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 Dwayne is, is focused on, on, on what he's doing. And, uh, I mean, I couldn't ask for two better guys, um, in my corner doing this, right? And the Seven Buck Productions 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, uh, picking the writers and getting made.

And we know that's going to be another adventure doing all that. But from where it 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 one of the guys at Seven Buck Productions by the name of Frankie, who he nicknamed himself my prospect because he had to put the story together, right? So he goes, yeah, I know I'm your prospect. He's like a little brother to me. He just had his first baby, him and his wife, not too long ago. And I got to see that and be a part of that. And through this journey, I've got so close with these guys and just gained, I say, family out of it. So it's pretty cool to be where we're at now. I'm excited for that. You got a lot of good stuff happening.

For sure, bro. It's cool to see. For sure. Cool to see.

Takes us back to that full surrender. Yeah. I just give it up to him and your timing. I don't get impatient. COVID slowed things down. The writers' strike, the actors' strike, we went through all that. That slowed things down, you know, but, you know, we were okay. I remember Dwayne telling me, now, you know, thank you for being this patient. And I said, brother, it's good. It's in his timing. That 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 what you tell me and continue to relax and tan in the yard and hang in the pool and contend 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 I said, why? A lot of people that you work with, DJ, is, do they get impatient? He said, yeah. He said, think about it. He goes, you know, we're almost 7 years into this.

He goes, it's a slow process over here. He goes, people are like, when's this going to happen? 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 prayer is the Lord, I tell the Lord, just keep me healthy. I got some injuries and I'm banged up a little bit. And flying in the airports constantly and, uh, you know, go, go, go. Sometimes I get a little, uh, worn down a little bit with the body, but I said, you're going to keep me healthy and, and, and until, 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, Mel, we're wrapping up the interview here. Yeah. Well, we have this new thing that we do, it's called the Hot Quest. Oh, are you familiar with Claude? No. Anthropic? No. Okay, it's, it's basically the most powerful large language AI model in the world right now. Oh, okay. But, uh, for consumers. So I had Claude scrape the internet, every internet, every interview, every viral clip, every controversial moment tied to you and the Hells Angels Hells Angels, and this is what it came back with. Oh, you ready?

Am I ready? All right.

The war between the Hells 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 hitmen 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, those old ladies these, they'll quit wanting to be Hells Angels. So here's the question: what was the single most dangerous moment of your entire time in the Hells Angels?

So I know Spike, I know Kevin O'Neill, you know, um, he's currently, you know, he got a life sentence. Um, uh, I think the most dangerous times I would have to say was, you know, with, with all them bombings that were going on, you know, now it wasn't face to face, you know. We never know. You flip 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 Mel Chancy back in the day and being like, this dude 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 pounds, 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? Could you imagine grocery shopping, waiting for your wife, and I come out and do all that? You're like, what is this knucklehead doing, right?

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 out and that gym parking lot's wide open. Like, you know, big, big— the gym was in big parking lot, big, uh, uh, had also stores around it. If they went on, they wanted under there and did that, you know. Or when we were at the clubhouse, wired something, an explosive, to the door. Did you ever find 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 will know a little bit more when you talk to him because they had to come in, the ATF had to come in. He found the 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, and I think we probably need you guys out. Well, they called the ATF out. They had to come out and with their, with their bomb squad they had to build a perimeter around this because they couldn't— I believe if I'm saying it right, they couldn't, uh, detach it and they hit it with a water cannon to blow it up.

No shit.

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, we, uh, he found that under his truck. I never found nothing under mine, you know, or in my house doors 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, the, and the, 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 the dangerous, most dangerous times for me is when, when all them bombings started, because because now it could have came from anywhere, you know. If we ran into each other, we were face to face, then it was on face to face, and whatever happened happened, you know. But them bombings was, uh, definitely a time that we all had to be alert.

And looking back now, definitely the most dangerous times. Roger that.

There's a follow-on. If someone was caught out here wearing a Hells Angels patch and they didn't earn earn it. What actually happened to them, and did you ever have to be the one to handle that personally?

Hmm, we did have an incident, and the guy had his whole back tattooed with a Hells 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 make that you put an out date on your tattoo. So when you have a tattoo on you, you— wherever you have the Hells Angels tattoo, if you leave, it'll say out 10, you know, or April 4th, 11, 2004. You know, my out date was under here. I, I covered it up, you know, it was under there. It said out, you know, the month you were out, the year you were out. So you couldn't go see anybody and go, look, I'm an active Hells Angel, 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 Hells Angel, he's from Oakland, he got the tattoo.

So when we got a hold of Oakland and, and, and said this guy's name They never heard of him. So now it 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. Shit. Took the tattoo off. But, you know, I don't— you know, I didn't know the guy. I'd never seen him before. He ended up in our neighborhood and we kept hearing about him. He was telling people about— he's had tank tops on, and I know what he was thinking. But, uh, 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 hit any club and get their whole entire stuff— the president's tags, the tags, the back, the front, runs and you see the fake stuff going on. You know, I responded earlier, there was a fake where there was a Mongol taking a Hells Angel patch off a guy on a motorcycle, and he took the patch off him, the supposed Hells Angel, and the guy didn't even get off his bike to do anything.

And the Mongol grabbed it. And your team was showing me a video earlier and I had to respond on it, and I go, yeah, 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 both were fake, right? So, but as crazy as that sounds, I mean, there was people going and doing that, you know. I mean, no tattoo artist that was in our neighborhoods would go put the Hells Angel tattoo, a death head, on somebody unless they heard it from us. We worked with a few tattoo guys, so when, when a member got in the club, you know, we we— you went to our tattoo artist and you got the tattoo on you right away, right? It was the first thing you were doing after you got your patch, going, you know, after your partying for the day. The next day you're going to the tattoo shop and you're putting your— you know, my first Hells Angel tattoo was right under here, you know. Um, but there was tattoo artists that were, you know, these guys were coming in with the stencil and saying, hey, I'm a member here, and when you put this on me— damn— they weren't, you know, using their head and weren't thinking.

And we've had that incident too where we We had a school, a couple tattoo artists. You don't 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 as crazy as it sounds, Sean. People are, uh— doesn't surprise me. Yeah, it's as weird as could be, right? That's the last thing I'd want to do is if I was just a normal person. I mean, even if I thought it was cool and I looked up to these clubs, I wouldn't want to go put their insignia on me. You know, members have gave gave their life for that club. Obviously, look what we all went through, right? The people we lost gave up their lives to be a part of 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, bro. I would love to. Heavenly Father, Father, we thank you. We thank you for this fellowship time with you. We thank you for Sean. Father, I thank you for Sean. I thank you for his life. I thank you for speaking upon his heart, blessing his family. Lord, we thank you for your Holy Spirit that guides us, that leads us. Lord, etch upon our hearts full surrender, that we may know your word, and your word, your truth, would set us free. And 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 no, they are not too far gone, no matter where they're at, rock bottom, as I say, rock bottom has built some of the best relationships with you, Lord. From prisons to hardships, let them feel your presence. Meet them, Father, right where they are, that they may know and feel your love for each and every one of us. Because you, Father, loved us so much that you gave us your one and only Son. Our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ. And whoever shall believe and call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

May they 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 said, amen. Amen. Amen. Beautiful. Thank you, bro. Thank you, man. So cool. Mel. Yeah, God bless, brother. You too, brother. God bless you. Super happy we met. Had an amazing day. Me too. I've been looking forward to this since we, uh, set this up 4, 5, 6 weeks ago. I've been— I've been looking forward to it and praying on it, and, uh, and, uh, my expectations were we're met, Sean. I have to tell you that it was— it's been great. And, uh, you are just as them guys were telling me about. You are a good dude and an amazing dude. And, uh, and I can see your passion, I can see your heart, and I can see what the Lord's doing in your life. And, uh, what a blessing that is, right? Guys like me and you, right? Two knuckleheads, I'll say, right? Who ran the gamut, right, Sean? And, uh, and touched every We checked every mark off of, uh, being knuckleheads.

Yeah.

And here we are, right back at you, man. I love you, bro. Thank you. No matter where you're watching The Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.