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As you are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Good Evening. Sons of Anarchy meets to Departed in this fast paced, high wire act memoir from former ATF agent Ken Krok, the first federal agent in history to go under cover and successfully infiltrate the infamous and infamously violent Pagan Motorcycle Club, a white supremacist biker gang. Longtime ATF agent, kan Crok had earned the right to coast to the end of a story career, having routinely gone undercover to
apprehend white supremacists, gun runners, and gang members. But after a chance encounter with an associate of the Pagan Motorcycle Gang created an opening, he transformed himself into Slam, a monstrous axe handle wielding enforcer whose duty was to protect
the leadership mother club at all costs. He befriended the club's most violent and criminally insane members and lived among them for two years, covertly building a case that would eventually take down the top members of the gang in a massive federal prosecution, even as he risked his marriage,
his sanity, and his life. With today's law enforcement largely moving toward the comparative safety of cyber operations, he became one of the last of its kind, a master class in old school tactics that mark Croke as a dying breed of undercover agent and became legendary in law enforcement. Now, for the first time, Croke tells the story of his terrifying undercover life in the Pagans the Unspeakable, Violence, extremism, drugs,
and disgusting Rituals. Written with best selling crime writer Dave Wedge, and utilizing the exclusive cooperation of those who lived the case with him, as well as thousands of pages of court files and hours of surveillance tapes and photos, Croke delivers a frightening, nail biting account of the secretive and brutal biker underworld. The book that we're featuring this evening is Riding with Evil, taking down the notorious Pagan motorcycle gang with my special guest, former ATF agent and author
Ken Croke. Welcome to the program and thank you so much for this interview, Ken Croke.
Thanks San, happy to be here.
Thank you so much for joining us this evening with this incredible tale. Let's get right to this, uh. In two thousand and eight, you write that a call came into the field office, the Boston office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ATF where you were a supervisor. This person had a connection with the Devil's Disciples, which was a support group of the Pagans. Tell us what this person had to say, this Jake, and what did he have to say and how you initially got involved.
Yeah, Jacob come in and had met with a one of the agents or coaching from the Boston office and had said that he had some information on the Devil's Disciples and that he knew they were recruiting new members and that he knew they were involved in some illegal activities and he thought that he could do some work or introduce an undercover agent into into that group. You know, if if that's something that law enforcement would want.
Now, the person that took that call is a person named Eric Katchian, and he was an agent that took the call you.
He spoke to you.
Why did he ask you? What was your background that he was interested in? And tell us about this conversation you had regarding this.
Sure, So early in my career I started in Los Angeles, California, and so I worked a lot of gang investigations. In particularly, I worked a lot of motorcycle gangs, and so I was involved investigations with the Mongols and the Vargos and some others, and the agents in Boston when I was transferred back to Boston eventually knew that I had this background.
There hadn't been a lot of outlaw motorcycle gang investigations in the Boston office, and so when this information came in, you know, part of coaching's due diligence was, well, let me talk to a resource who knows a bit about you know, these gangs, and to find out if this story, you know, matches, it has credibility. You know the structure of gangs and and kind of their makeup and in hearing about different things they may be doing. It's kind of a validity check if you will, like, does this
make sense? Wese work these types of investigations.
Right, So you brought this Jake character in, or they brought Jake in and they first off to vet him. They gave him a polygraph test any passed, So from there, so from there, how do you get involved in what's this of this faithful event that happens with this Boston mic.
Yeah, it's it's it's one of those things where you can plan out, you know, all sorts of things in different ways to go about investigations, and then you know somebody else has a plan for you. And in this particular instance, you know, Jake passes the polygraph, so that's step number one, Like, Okay, this person isn't coming in, they're not lying about this or you know, trying to
set up an undercover agent. There's all sorts of different, you know, reasons why somebody could come in a false info and so you pass that first test, and then second test is like, all right, if somebody's going to go on to cover. And again, it was never the intent to do a long term investigation, undercover investigation that is. But even if it was going to be short term, you had to look at the person Jake, and but
you also have to look at the surroundings. So if I was going to be the undercover, and initially that was not the plan, but if I was, if Jake has a wife or adult children or whatever that is in his life and they're involved in this setting, right, then you have to check that part out too, because you can't just have somebody that's never met anybody in his family. You know, if your backstory is that you're with them, then then they would have to know you. So I needed to meet in this case, it was
just his wife to see what her makeup was. Was this somebody who's going to be able to stand up to this, you know type of work?
And she passed the test? And then what happens with Boston, Bob and Jake and how are you involved?
So it starts with Boston Mike, and so Boston Mike, you know, I was I was actually helping. It was it was freezing cold and there was a hot water
heater that froze up. It's it's kind of a long, convolute story, but anyways, when we were helping to get the hot water heat going, Boston Mike shows up and seen and introduces himself, and he knows Jake and so they're talking and then eventually, you know, I start talking and just kind of hanging out, you know, bs in a bit, and it comes up that they were having a party in the you know, upcoming weeks, and he's like, hey, you know, if your body wants to come along, you know,
have him come along. So it was an opportunity. It wasn't a planned opportunity. It wasn't like, oh, let's set the stage and you know, so we can do this introduction. It just happened, which you know, at the time you didn't know how far this was going to go. But it was like, okay, well it makes sense now that I'm going to be at least the one to go initially. And I and I, you know, the plan at that time was okay, I'll start it and then I'll hand
it off to somebody else. But you know, his events turning, that wasn't an option.
So you report back to Katchian and there's at least a short term surveillance plan set up. And you just said that things moved really fast right after that. Normally the kinds of precautions you do as an undercover agent. It was interesting to read about it, and you talk about the term backstopping. So explain everything that normally you would have done, and in this regard you already had
an alias and from previous undercover work. Tell us what all goes into building that kind of as you call it backstopping.
Yeah, and we keep in the book we outlined some of it, but it's really the common sense spot. There's other things that are furthering more in each other that we don't talk about just because we're not going to give up the technology or the techniques. But the point is is that if you're going to take on the identity or the persona, just simple things. You know, Dan, you get jumping out at your house. You know, you have a driver's license. You have these things that seem
simple because they're legit. You got them just by living your life. But when you have an undercover life not diseasey. And I know most people would love to see no jump mails show up in their mailbox. But if you don't have any jump mail, that looks weird. If you don't have flyers outside your house, those kind of things.
And so you have to create this persona and so that it becomes as closer as real as it can to what a real person is and that those real types of things, solicitations and things like that would happen to that person because these organizations they look for that. You know, when you get for or father enough in you're just showing up at one party, nobody's checking it in that stuff, you show up in a couple of parties,
nobody's checking it. But all of a sudden you're joining one of these kind of elite organizations, if you will, They are going to check this stuff, and you better have the stuff lined up in order to get through because if you get compromised, you know who knows where it goes from there.
So you go to this party and it's not really a party, as you say, and they're trying to find out information about you. So who are the people that you meet right away? And what is the talk? Almost right away.
There's you know again they're they're trying to saying that they're trying to, you know, ask figure out who I am and all that. It sounds more diligent or more purposeful than it really is. You know, it's like anybody who goes to a party like these these guys aren't saying out of the gate like oh hey, this guy here, Ken, we want to bring him in and make him one of us.
Like that.
That wasn't what the intent of this was. I was just invited to a party. But for me it's a job and it's an opportunity to assess who's who. And then for the others it's you know, for them, it's just like, hey, what, you know, what's this? What's this guy about? You know? What? What is he? You know? Is he a good guy to hang out with? You know? I don't think they're looking that far down the road where they're like, oh, hey, we want to make this guy one of us.
Okay, So tell us as you as you read in the book a little bit about the pagan history as a one of the five major bike games in in the world, and also the idea of who Jake was in terms of you say, there's many ways to be involved with the outlaw biker gangs, and some of one of them them is a prospect. But explain some of the process to us and the little history of the organization.
Sure, so this is particularly now a lot of the Alsac gangs are set in it's very similar structure. So this was Devil's Societles but the Pagans have their own structure, but they're all, you know, somewhat similar, and so they have hired so you basically when you start and you're accepted, it's just a person that they like. Then it's what they call a hangaround face and so and that hang around face could go from six months to six years. You just don't know how long that part of the
process goes. But what that means is you can go to events, you can go to parties. You're not certainly not involved in any of the criminal activity. You're not going to church and I'll explain what church is in a minute. You're not you're just outside. You're some of you can hang around, but they're not sharing anything, you know, particularly illegal activities with you. From there, you may get asked if if you wanted to be a part of this thing and that, and that's exactly what they said me.
And if you agree, they put you into this prospecting phase. Prospecting is nothing anybody wants to do. It's it's you know, it's a horrible period of time. But what it is is, you know, the gang is saying, okay, you're going to give us all your information. We're going to do our background checking. Each game does it differently, and you are then going to go into this prospect phase. And for the Pagans it's at least six months long, and in the in the Pagans, you are a prospect for the
Pagan Nation is what they call it. So it's not to a specific chapter, and basically you are indentured to the game. You are on call twenty four to seven. You do whatever they tell you to do, and a lot of it is grountwork. There are all sorts of history rules, all of that you have to learn and and you have to do your best not to deviate or screw up on these rules, and certain things can
happen to you during that time. One of the things you have to do is you carry these bags full of all sorts of stuff, extra cigarettes, you know, spark plugs, light bulb like. You have to have all this stuff on you, and any member at any time could say, hey, prospect, you know, give me a cigarette, or a prospect give me a you know, I need a spark plut for my bike, whatever it is. And there was actually a list of things you had to have on and if you screwed up, if they asked you a question, you
know the answer if you didn't. If they asked your cigarette you didn't have one. Whatever it is, there's a couple different ways they would deal with it. One of the things you had to carry on you is a calendar and you had to mark off your days as a prospect, your goal getting to one eighty. But there was no guarantee at one eighty you were going to become a member. That was just the general time when
that could happen. And so if you screwed out, they could add days to your prospect or weeks, which is horrible. Or they would bangcheck you, which is basically they basically give you a palm strike to the head, or they could just simply throw you up, depending on the severity of what you do. So you're under that du rest the entire time. I mean, you know there were prospects that were beaten with ax aams. It escalates depending on
what the screw ups are. After the prospecting case, if you were to get through it, then you become a probationary patch member and that period lasts for a year. So your patch and so you have your colors and you can attend different events. And then within the club structure, you will have the chapter president who runs the chapter, and there's certain signifiers on their colors that allow you
to know that they're the chapter president. There's Sergeant Arms, who is the second rank highest rank in a chapter. There is a vice president, but the vice president's really only status is if the president gets killed or goes to jail, then there's a treasurer. And then some chapters will be a second term. And then above each chapter
is what they call the Mother Club. And the Mother Club is made up of and so it's almost like its own chapter, but it oversees the entire pay, the nation, the entire game, and each Mother Club member would have so there'd be a national president, national vice president, National Slejeant of Arms, and then but each one of those members and in theory mother club would have thirteen members. It oftentimes didn't, but in theory would, and those Mother
Club members would have areas of responsibility. So you'd have a Mother Club member that maybe over New York, one over Northern New Jersey, one over Pennsylvania, or they might divide Pennsylvania. So I'll pause there.
Dane a couple of the things that demonstrate and illustrate all the kinds of things that you talk about, this pagan world that you are were going to enter into soon. The guys that you met, Boston Mike and our pardon me, Boston, Bob and Billy Jacobson. Bob tells you a little bit about you talked about the rules and the rules that had to be obeyed or else harsh consequences. And Bob tells you about Billy sleeping with I think it's a mother club member, but at least a pagan member's wife
or girlfriend. And then also was very important. It's right at the very beginning, whether when you're considering and your ATF is considering whether you should be able to go do this, and you see the opportunity that that presents itself. Soon enough, there's a person named Bennett, and so you talk about Bob and Billy, and you talk about a young man named Bennett and Hogman. So tell us a little bit about this Bennett and Hogman and Bob and Billy.
Sure, there's a lot there in all unpackage piece piece, So Boston, Mike in so in the in the Devil's Disciples, in the in the chapter that they were in, you have Billy Jacson, Boston My Boston Bob, and a few others, and there was talk although I wasn't, you know, part of this talk early on, because again I wasn't one of them, and I wasn't certainly in their plans to
patch over to become Pagans. But there was talk that the Pagans are going to open a chapter in Massachusetts and that these some of the members of the Devil's Cycles were going to patch over, which means basically they would turn in their callers to their gang and they would take on Pagan colors so they wouldn't have to go through prospecting. Doesn't happen often, but sometimes when they're going to open a full chapter of regular outlaw motorcycle
game members, they'll do it. So the plan was that these five individuals were going to start this chapter up in Massachusetts. So the interesting piece of all that was that you had Billion Jameson in Boston Bob. Both had qualities, both seem to have a following. So I kind of tried to stay in the middle and was successful at doing that. So I would spend time with Boston Bob and sometimes we meet a bar and hang out and we talk and he'd be like, yeah, you should, you know,
think about doing this. And the other times i'd meet Billy, we meet down South Boston and we would go to some bars down there and we'd hang out and he'd be talking about how he was going to be running these things. At some point when right as I was supposed to be going down to meet the payments for the first time, they were going down for an event and it was actually a memorial event for Bennett. And I'll go back to explain what happened there, and they
ended up going down on Friday night. I was supposed to meet them in Long Island on Saturday night, and what had happened is and Billy had said that he had hooked up with a female down there. He never got specifical about who it was or who they might have been tied to. And I don't even know that he knew it at the time. I do know that Boston Bob had warned him and said, you should not be screing around with any of these ladies down here, because you don't know who they're tied to, and you
are going to get yourself into some trouble. And Billy, you know, he just he you know, we Billy was doing what Billy was gonna do, and he didn't listen. So as they they went down that that Friday night, and they were at a bar called Mobo's on Long Island, and they they were in there and and this female was there. And and again, you don't none of us ever knew the real story on what happened. I can tell you what Billy stated, and and then I can tell you what others had stated. But Billy, you know,
walks in and is seen by this woman. And but but but Billy didn't see her, but she sees him. And so she makes a comment to her boyfriend, who happens to be the president of one of the New Jersey chapters, and says, hey, this guy over here, see him over there, he raped me some weeks ago. Now that may have happened. According to Boston Bob, he said it didn't happen, that they had had a conceptual relationship, but that she was panicking because of what her you know,
new boyfriend would say. But I don't know, it could have happened either way. Billy walks into, you know, a situation. He doesn't even know it's gonna happen. So oftentimes illegal activity, particularly when you're in one of these biker bars, it happens in the bathrooms. And so the bathrooms, you know, you'll have there'll be people posted outside the bathrooms, and if somebody's in there selling drugs, buying drugs, using drugs, or you know, any meetings or whatever, that they'll block
the door. So the Pagans will blocked the door and not allow folks in when their leadership was inside doing whatever they don't. So in this particular situation, Billy got summoned to the bathroom, and so he's thinking, this is about the new chapter. This is great. You know, they're probably gonna name me the president. You know, this is all good. And so he walks through the door and several Pagans are inside the bathroom floor to the exact and Dan Lesia beating him, and and so you know, Peter,
and again I was not there. This is what I was told was that They then tell Boston Bob, you know, get the scumbag you know, off the floor, get him back to the hotel. Keep him there. We're gonna come, you know, to the hotel. We're gonna cut his stick off and throw him the dumpster. So Tracy helps get this guy off the floor. Boston Bob and Tracy walk
him out, get him into the car. Boston Bob leaves, and you know, very studidly realizes, like, if I go back to this hotel, they're gonna come kill this guy. I left Boston with this guy. Everyone, a bunch of people know I left with him. He shows up dead in a dumpster. This is probably gonna come back on me. He opts not to go back to the hotel. Now, maybe he was trying to do the citizen duty and not get Billy killed either. But he drives, you know,
straight off Long Island, drives back up to Boston. He basically dumps Billy at the hospital, basically just you know, pulls up to the front of the hospital, leaves him at the door, and heads off. And and Billy that's the end of you know, Billy. I did have one interaction with him. I get a phone call in the middle of the night, I get actually get a text, and it's basically the trips off. We'll explain later. And so at that point, I'm like, well, what's this about.
And I'm trying to reach Billy. I'm trying to reach Boston Bob not having any success. At some point, Billy does call me and we had one very short conversation, and it was his thing was, get out, don't do this, get out, why you can, I'm out, You're never gonna see me again. Phone goes dead and Trudu's word never never saw him again. Now I know, Dan, you had another part of that question, and that went on so
long that I've forgot. It was the the Bennett murder, so you know, get prior to me becoming affiliated with the the gang, prior to me ever setting foot on Long Island, there was an event and a party and in a room where Hogman and Bennett were there there Bennett was killed. And there's two different variations of what happened.
The variations were one that he was, you know, he was using his long knife and and oftentimes they would do this, used a long knife, scoop out some coke, snort the coke, and then sheath the knife, and that he had passed out, fell forward onto the knife, piercing you know, through his eye and his brain stem and killing himself. So basically he killed himself. The other variation is that Hogman was passed out and that Bennett's saw an opportunity to you know, use a little bit of
Hogman's coke. Hogman woke up, kicked Bennett in the back of the head, driving the knife through his eye and his brainstem and killing. Part of my endeavors is I is I, you know, as I was moving forward this investigation was to get whatever information I could on this death, to see if we could put together what actually happened
in that room. Forensically it didn't line up. There was there was reason to believe that there was more to it than just falling over onto a knife in killing yourself, and so that was something that I set out to do during you know, of course of the investigation.
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my listeners ten percent off your first three months. Visit ritual dot com slash murder and turn healthy habits into a ritual that's ten percent off at ritual dot com slash murder. Now, Ken we were just talking about you're on the precipice of joining this. You talk, you have some allies. You have a state Attorney Mike Sullivan in your corner, and you also have Andy Anderson at the
ATF that is supportive of what you're going to do. Now, before we start telling everybody about your journey into the being a prospect with with the Pagans, this might be a little bit out of order, But what are the things that you are What is the main thing you needed from an permission for from this agency for this to be effective in being a prospect and working your way up to the higherarchy of the Pagans.
Well, you know, part of part of any of these investigations, particularly long term undercover investigations. First of all, they don't happen that often, and the approval levels go to the highest spots within the government. But in this case, you know, we're fortunate because Mike Sullivan was the US Attorney. He also happened to be the acting director of ATF at the time, so he was wearing two hats, which was really helpful. And Andy Anderson was especially in charge of
the Boston Field division. Both these guys are extremely supportive, but you know they wanted to be brief. They want to know, hey, what's the goal here? Like And for me, you know, again, it was never the plan that I was going to be doing the long term undercover, at least out of the out of the gate. We went further and further down the road, it was apparent that it was not going to be an opportunity to swap somebody else in there. But you know, even at this stage,
we're not one hundred percent there yet. But we knew what the investigation, what we were going for, and I knew that for me to be involved in it, I wasn't looking to you know, bust a bunch of people for stolen motorcycle parts and some things like that. That if we're going to do this, we're going to do it right, and we're going to do it and infiltration and try to get to the highest levels of the group.
Understanding that all sort of things can happen on any single day that can end the investigation, whether it's being your identities compromise, or an event that's going to take place that you can't participate in. So part of this was to get the approvals to do the things that you would need to do, and so there's internal approves you get through atf and then there's you know, approves
that you would get with US attorneys. Obviously also a willingness for them to prosecute this type of investigation, because what's the point if you're going to do all this and there's non interested in prosecuting And that was never in doubt. They had a large interest in prosecuting this group, in preventing them from spreading any further.
So you talk about being a prospect, and so you gain the trust of these people very quickly. The for example, the President J R. Everling, and he invited you to the communion, to the first communion of his of his son, so impressive stuff. And you said, at every one of these points, at every one of these events, every thing that you were invited to, they use it as an opportunity to find out more about you, like they would
find out about anyone. But you've found out soon enough what they were obviously in a war with the Hell's Angels, that's one thing we didn't mention. But so soon enough you realize what they wanted you for specifically.
Yeah, this goes on. You know again, we say, you know, we build the trust quickly, and I guess you'd have to define quickly, but for me, it seemed like it was an eternity. But you're going back and forth and you're, you know, tending different events, you're staying at different you know, places, and you're get to know and different people, and you're
being social. And part of this is you're, you know, you're really telling them what they want to hear, and you know, you're invited certain things and you go to these things and so you're you're building up that kind of it's like any anything else, any time you meet anybody else. You know, you don't know that you really sizing somebody up, but you are, you know, you're kind of a value. Is this type of person I want to hang out and beer with? Is this somebody that
you know I want to become friends with? Or you know, is this somebody that you know really has no qualities that I'm interested in. So that's kind of that dance. You know, it's all one sided because I know what I'm meeting with and I know what my objective objective is, but they don't. And so convincing them that you are something that you're not, which is one of them and so that process goes on, and then as you're doing that, they are trying to find out about you, so like, hey,
where do you live, where do you work? You know, what do you do? You know, have you ridden with any other? Game? Like you know, there's and it happens gradually, and some were very diligent in doing Some of them it just be you know, they just have a regular conversations. They don't really care. Others were not. Others were there to check your story. And you know, one in particular who ultimately became my sponsor was Roadblock, And he was
very diligent in asking a lot of questions. And he would ask a lot of questions and then re asked them after some time. And I often get asked, you know, hey, how hard was to keep everything straight? And I tell you, and I use this analogy. You know, if Dan, if you told me you went to you know, if I asked you, hey, tell me a lie about where you went to dinner and who you were with last night, What did you eat, what restaurant? What was the interior
looking like? So you'd be fine. You would tell me a lie and you would lay it all out. You know, I had a steak. It was meaning, well, you know, I went to this restaurant and so forth, and that's fine, that's easy. But then let a week go by and I come back and say, hey, Dan, you know last week you're talking about this restaurant and what did you have to eat and how did you have it cooked? And that's the hard part because it's not a real memory.
There's no natural recall back to an event. You have to go back to a line, and keeping that straight is very difficult. And so that's and that's and they know the weakness to that as well, and so Roadblock would constantly be testing you with those things. And of course the further you get in the process, the more documentation in things that you had to answer, Like there was a formal process of a whole lot of background information they asked, and they went and checked out, and
they regularly checked up on me throughout the investigation. They did some bounce the they you know, I would set my my bags up on my bike so I would know if anybody went into them, and uh, and they regularly went into my bags and rifle throne and see what was in there. So yeah, they do their homework.
There.
There's a reason why they'd never been infiltrated before because they're they're very secretive and they're very good at what they do. And that just means, you know that we had to raise our game.
You talk about that, and I know I'm jumping ahead here, but we won't be able to go into a fraction of the stories that really make up this incredible book, but to demonstrate the vetting process and to testing and the mistrust that they have initially and that is why they haven't been infiltrated till you came around. Talk about this. They talked about a drug dealer, a black drug dealer that had given them a problem. What did they want you to do?
Yeah, so they had if it's if it's what I think you're talking about, they had they had come to me. So I just courchased a bounce of crack cocaine from Hogman and his source. And Hagman was armed, you know, with the fire when we were doing this transaction. And when it was done, he's like, hey, bro, you know, hang around, and so so I hang around in the crack dealer had left and hey, listen, and I've got some you know, heavy work that I need you to help me with. And Hogman had just broken his foot
in like five places. There was a pagan that they that was out bad meeting. They kicked him out and out bad meetings, said no Pagan college. It can't be around pagans. If you see him, you're supposed to beat him. So Hagman had literally kicked this guy so hard he shouted his own foot in five places. And so he's like, hey, I need some help in this this heavy work. There's you know a guy that we killed Upstate tracing in him tracing it is another member of up State. It
was actually a president of the Upstate chapter. And you know, we buried the body and we need to move the body. And and I'm like, why are you going to move bodies like the landsman sold where it was at. We're afraid that they're gonna start building, they gonna find it. Tracy's got a big lot where he lives. So we need some help and digging up the body, moving the body and reburying it. In my eye, bro, you know, just let me know where I went. And so a
period of time goes by. You know, it didn't happen overnight, it did, You know? There was conversation about it. You know, I got recorded conversation about it, but there was no definitive found like, hey, we're gonna go do it next Saturday. It was anything like that. And so there were some you know, in in atfore like ah, it's probably never gonna happen. There were others who were very concerned about
it happening. There were others who were very concerned that this could be a setup, that they figured out something about me or who I was, and that you know, because this isn't the cat Skills. That's part of that was the bodies in the Catskills. And it was in the middle of the winter in this particular area of the Cat Skills. There's virtually no one up there during
this time. So you know, fast forward. And also it was like going to jump in my truck and Hogman and I we're going to take a ride up there. And so, you know, I met Hogman. He's got a gone on his waistband, which wasn't he didn't always have a gun on his waistban, but it wasn't completely unusual that he had gone his wastepan he gets in the truck. Hogman is a very about four hundred fifty pounds, very large, heman, and he pulls the gun out of his waist ban puts it in the club box for the ride up,
which is a couple of hours. So we go up and he's laying out the story. He's like, yeah, you know this guy, you know, we ripped him for his drugs. You know, he just leave. He didn't. He got mouthed the killing him. You know. We we've wrapped him in a package, you know, and you know, we've cut off his hands and there's there was a hog farm, not farre and Tracy, you know, fed the hands to the hog, to the hogs. But we need to get this body back up. And I'm like, well, how long ago? And
he's like, oh, you know, like six months ago. So I'm like okay. So he's like, yeah, we get to sing up. We're gonna more. So we get up there and you know, it's it's February, so in the Catskills it's freezing cold. So you know, I'm thinking, how are we going to dig a grave in the middle of the winter in the Catskills? And so Tracey's like, yeah, no worries, man, I already put down some rock solid and so he had treated the ground and let it sit and long home it works. So you have to
dig a hole, Dan in the middle of the winter. Uh, that's that's the way to do it. So so we sit there in now it was daylight, and we've got to pick and we've got to shovel. Now hogman's got the broken legs, so he's sitting on the side and Tracy and I are digging this And if you had an aerial cam, it would almost be comical because at this point, you know, prior to going up there, ATF was very nervous about the fact that this now looked like it could be a setup, like I was going
to dig my own grave. You know, they were gonna do whatever they're gonna do, and they were going to bury me out there in the middle of nowhere. So you know, I'm constantly It was the one time that ATF demanded that I wore a wire, and wires create risk because they can be detected. If they detected, you're not gonna be able to explain it. So but it was,
it was, it was not negotiable. It was the one time I had to him, quite honestly, I wasn't you know, totally opposed to it because I wasn't sure what was going to happen. But if you had the aerial came and you were looking at the holes were digging this hole, it would almost be comical because it was like a dance. I did not want to turn my back to Tracy because I had to shovel when Tracy had to pick, and I didn't want him burying that in my back
or my skull. And so we're moving around this hole and we're digging and it's just not It seems like it goes on forever. But eventually we get a couple of feet down the hole is done, and and against daylight, so you know, they're like, hey, let's go wait. You know, actually Tracy had some erons you wanted to run. So we're bouncing around believing not he actually was filing his taxes of all things, which I get Apparently bikers file
some micros file the texts. So we go back to the house and in a hogman getting high and you know, hanging out there for it to get dark. Eventually gets dark. We head out and we take the plan was We're gonna take Tracy's truck in my truck. Hogman would drive my truck, Tracy and I would go in his truck. We'd pull up to the area, go into the woods, pick up the body, throw it in the back of my truck. Hogman would just immediately leave and we go
in different directions and meet back at Tracy's use. So Tracy jumps out of the truck and again, now it's dark. There was a moon out that night, but it's now It's like, okay, the whole could have been a whole roote.
You know.
Now we're in the middle of the woods. You know, we take nothing of him to out there. Nobod's ever gonna find me. So he jumps out of his truck, and first of all, Tracy had a gun in his waistband, which Tracy very rarely had a gone on, so that had my you know, my alert up. And he jumps out of the truck, throws in the park, jumps out the truck and kind of darts into the wood. He's like,
come on, he darts in the woods. But I got to get out of the truck on the other side, and I had some knee issues, so I wasn't moving super fastt but he's gone, he's into the woods. So I'm like, man, this really could be a setup. Now I did have a gun on me. And so we're moving to the woods and I can hear him, I can't really see him, but I'm keeping making sure to keep trees between me and you know, so at least I've got somewhere to kind of duck behind me and
called out to him. He's like, oh, here, over here, you know, so you know I'm falling the voice, but keep these trees between me. And we come to kind of a clearing in the wood and I could see his hands because you know, there was enough for where the moon was shining through. I could see his hands and there was nothing in his hands. But there was a huge tree down on the ground. He was on the far side of that tree. So I approached the tree.
I could see his hands, and he's like, hey, I dug it up earlier, so we have to deal with that. And and behind this it was a tark and it was you know, wrapped, you know, around a body, and he's like, come on, you know, grab grab your side.
So I grab my side again. He's got nothing in his hands, so I'm not now no longer really worried about the gun we carry, you know, we carry the body out and it's as we're carrying it, you know, we're listening up because we're trying to get through the brush and and there's like liquid, uh it's it reads.
It smells terrible and there's liquid just pouring out of the of the tar and it's poor, you know, depending on where you were on the hill, like as we were going up and down, its stilted more my way. The liquid, you know, come out on me, and I'm sure it came out on him too, So it's just, you know, really nasty going through. Finally, get out of the woods, thrown in the back of the truck. Hobb Man takes off. Tracy and I get into his truck. We both smell like ship and we drive back a
different route, but we go back to his house. Once we get there, we reach in the back of the truck, grab me. I can feel like what feels like, aren't and you know, I'm lifting it up. He lifted it up. We bring it over, dig the hole and uh yeah, I mean I dig the hole. We we bring it over the hole, put it in the in the hole.
We then dig, you know, put all the top soil back on, stomp it down, put more on the top so on, and try to make it look as natural as possible, which is pretty difficult in the middle of the winter. And and then we're done, and we head back into his house. Hogman and him get high again. Roadblock calls Hogman and Roadblock and Hogman we're half brothers. And and he goes, hey, have this conversation with these guys. And so we go in this back room and he says, hey,
talk to my brother. He said, none of us are going to ever talk about this again, not amongst ourselves, not with anybody else. You know, we did what we had to do here, it's done, don't ever bring it up again. So it's like, okay, whatever. Now we jump back in the truck. We're heading back to New York City, and and you know, I got mudd all over me and my boots, you know whatever. And Hugman's openly talking about, you know, why and how and everything else, you know,
the murder of the way down. So he clearly wasn't following us. But for me, part of it was like, all right, I now know that Roadblock is involved in this conspiracy. I don't know if he's involved in the murder itself or just a conspiracy to cover it up. But I know he knows because his brother was on the phone with him. They were talking, and then he relabeled his brother had said to him, so, you know, it's a dance like, you know, how am I gonna
find out if Roadblock really did know when? And so we ended up going back to the clubhouse on Long Island and Roadblock was there along with JR. And we went in and JR. And made a comment about my boots because we were coming to month and and I said, yeah, you know, we were up there taking care of that thing, trying to see you know, I was trying to list a conversation from them that they knew what we were doing and so forth, and Roadblock shot me a look like and he and he said, he goes, what was
that you're gonna say? And it was clear like, hey, you were warned not to talking about this and check them out, And so I took the noticing and that was that. So yeah, I know that went on for a while, but it stopped the simples and stories.
To tell Jesus has an opportunity to stop for a second for these messages.
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It's a thing.
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Now, ken, we don't have too much time, but we were. Your success in being a prospect with the Pagans is benefited by the circumstances with these guys as well. We didn't get into the sad aage beating that you avoided just by luck. You were temporarily kicked out of being a prospect and and then brought back in, and that was just a sort of a technicality. Somebody that vouched for you was out, so then the people that you
had built this relationship with the president Roadblock. His half brother Hogman is O'Davis the guy you were dealing drugs. You were you were able to deal drugs. You talk about the experience of being in a small town and and and the entire town paying homage to this, to this gang almost like celebrities, and them going into clubs, and you witnessing them paying protection, the bar owners, protection
to the Pagans, basically them controlling this entire town. You also got a house thanks to atf And eventually all of these people trusted you enough incredibly to perform church, to have church, and tell us what church is, and tell us a little bit about this place that you had wired for sound, and what exactly the evidence that you gathered at this recorded church meeting of the Pagans.
So church, and this is consistent with all our more psychic gangs, and how they conduct it is a little it could be different game to game, but church is where there's nothing holy about it. It is where they do all their criminal planning. It is a mandatory event. It usually happens on a weekly basis. Some some chapters will do it bi weekly, but at least once a week and in the this is where they talk about their criminal activities, what they're going to do, how they're
going to do it. And there's rules about church, meaning there are no electronics allowed. So it started off with you know, you had to take your battery out of your cell phone, and then they realized that you know, they could have you know, there's other ways to use cell phones to transmit, so no electronics at all. There were times, depending on the subject matter, was we'd be stripped naked. We'd be sitting there naked and these some ugly human beings that you're sitting there with, so nothing
enjoyable about that. There were other times where you know, the chapter besigeant arms had a r F detector which is used to you know, detect our signals, so if there's a transmitter in the room, it picks up on that, and they would want us to see if if we had if we had an r F detector, or if
we had any sort of our signal within us. So they and they would you know, conduct these meetings, and in these meetings, you know, sometimes it was you know, you know, just regular internal chapter stuff and what was happening in their bars, and you know who they might have been extorting money from or what plans they were to do whatever criminal activity we're gonna do. Other times they're talking about this chapter of business. Some of them
got more intent. Some of these church sessis can be much bigger, and they bring folks in Mother Club members or other chapters. And we were fortunate enough, you know, as you mentioned, I had an undercover house and over time built the trust with them, and it had a big basement that was better. Most of the time we had church in the president's garage and they would run like a heater to drawn out noise, and they were
very surveilance conscious. But the basement, particularly in the winter winter of my house, was better and they liked it, and they built up the trucks and I had some
hidden cameras and microphones in the basement. And so this one particular church session was a big one because they brought in all the chapter presidents from northern New Jersey and New York, and they also had a Mother Club member who was in charge of that entire era conno come to this church session, and they were particularly heated about the beating that you alluded to that had happened, which would have been me. If I hadn't got kicked out of the club, I would have been pulling guard duty.
But because I got kicked out, ultimately I got back in obviously, but Roadblock was doing guard duty and the Hell's Angels rolled out a whole pack of them with their support clubs and they beat Roadblock near death, beat him a ballpeen hammers. He was air flighted out, and so the retaliation for that was being planned in this particular church session, along with some other criminal activity. And it was the first time ever that this had been
caught on video. And not only was it caught on video and audio, but you could see us being RF detected, you know, during the meeting, and then you hear and see the conversation. So it was a it was a big part of the the criminal conspiracy for the prosecution.
You talk about the again we don't have too much time to go into this, but it's incredible that you had a wife, they managed three daughters that were very, very understanding because you had to really go and and dedicate two years of your life to a different persona. And you talk about your your wife being involved with ATF recently before that, previously she was an agent at the time. So the thing is you had an extraordinary support team with your wife and you and your kids,
so understanding. But after a couple of years and like you say, all this disgusting and hair raising events, there's so many times that you when you write about a recorder going off and making some noise. You're very very creative, luckily, for the things that you had to say and do spontaneously to keep your cover in this investigation. So it's a very exciting book that we really didn't go into all the Again, I can't even imagine the stress from
the possibility that you might be found out. And these guys, as you say, were very very vigilant in trying to determine whether you said who you were as you had said.
Yes, they certainly were. They had their processes and you had to go through it and they were constantly checking you. And you made, you know, reference to some of these things.
And so there's skill sets involved in it. This technology, there's techniques, but there is just dumb luck and you know me not me being kicked out of the club for that period of time, the roadblock up beating another quick and I know it would come to the end, and we were on a run and and there was like thirty of us, and we've gotten back to the attacked president's house and he had sent myself and in
Hogman out to pick something up. And now you know, I moved up in the ranks and I was now the sergeant arms within the chapter, so I was an officer, and so I was the highest ranking. So I highest ranking rides front left, so we pull out Hogman, who was the president, doesn't have any real status, but he pulls out around me because he was annoyed that I had become the sergeant arms over him, so he pulls off front left. Well I don't really care, right, I'm
not a real biker. So we're going down the road and within a quarter mile, as we're making a turn, Hogman gets wiped out by a mini man splat out on the road. Actually codes out at one point that would have been me, uh, because it wasn't hard it's fault. It was actually many being driver's fault. But that's the kind of things that would happen during this investigation. And to your point on Strets, it was every day. You never every day that you had a plan. It never
went according to plan. It might have the first ten minutes and then all of a sudden, some curveball was thrown at you. You're going to do this or they talked about this, and so you always had to be on your toes in adapt to that plan and hope it wasn't something that was going to have to shut down the case. It works.
You gathered information successfully with Church and all these recordings, and it's very exciting when you talk about using opportunities like your cover story that you were a lobster a poacher, so that you could go and meet with the cover team to give them the kind of evidence from the recordings and any other and fill them in on what was going on. These guys had to live almost a similar life to you, depriving themselves of their normal family lives.
You were successful with some very significant sentences, and you were successful with basically all the charges that you were intending to have these guys convicted of. Just tell us a little bit about just the conclusion of the case itself.
Yeah, So, the the takedown as we call it, it occurred an initiated with hell Boy. So hell Boy was an interesting character MMA fighter when he was strung out of meth extremely violent, and this story woudn't have time to go into when they actually a mother club member
wanted me to kill him. But he was a source of myth and I had been buying meth from him over a period of time, and it was determined to be safest to get him to come out, you know, do a meth deal with him and have him taken off as a buy bust afterwards, and then that would start, you know, all the search warrants and the rest warrants that were going to happen after that. So so I met him. It was about two o'clock in the morning.
The deal went down, and as he left, he was stopped and arrested, and and they you know, when they brought him back to interview, they basically told him, they said, hey, you in my club name. As you know, Dan was a Slam. They said, hey, you know Slam is a cop. You know he's an ATF agent. And hell Boy refused to believe he's like, no way he goes. I believe a lot of people might be a cop, not Slam. There's no way he's a cop. You know. It is
Don Rose. They did all the the executor all the search warrants and the restaurants across six five or six different states, brought all the evidence and interviewed all the suspects, and then just fast forward because I don't want this out of time. You know, the legal process went on for By the time the last defendant played out, it was about four years. And that's just because they you know, they would go through all the different motions of trying
to suppress different pieces of the evidence. The evidence was overwhelming. They you know, ultimately were not successful and suppressing you know, the evidence, and they all ultimately end up pleading guilty in receiving sentences sentence.
It's very very interesting too. I don't want to give too much away, but there's so much that we didn't even talk about. And in all the fascinating story, but the body that we went on and talked about, that the body that you had moved and put in the ground. We talk about elaborate test. What did you discover about that body?
But I mean almost every step with them was a test. And so you know, it's not just the body, it's you know, all of a sudden, you know, I would have peda come up to me and be like, hey, you know, could you, uh, let me see a gun?
Is this?
Uh? Is this ATF issued? Like literally would say ATF issue, And it's like all the agencies, why are you picking ATF do you know something? There was another time of photo it was in what he's looking for is reactions, and that's what they're always looking for. They're always trying to make you uncomfortable where you might say or do something. And there was a time when right before I got kicked out, you know that you referred to earlier where they you know, I called the cover team and say,
Heyle's changed plans. They now say I have to go back to Long Island. And that was a part and the cover team was nowhere near me. They had already gone north and so they were probably about two hours from me, and they'd say, we'll just get on your bike and go and I'm like, no, you know, I don't know if this is a test, I don't know what, you know, but I've got to follow through on this. And ultimately what it was they didn't know how to, you know, tell me that I was being kicked out
of the game had nothing to do with me. The national Vice president was beaten out the night before and because he vouched me, anybody he vouched for it was out. So they you know, that was another test like are you going to stay? You're not going to go, and ultimately got kicked out and then they ended up bringing me back in. So it was it was a constant
mind games. It was physically very difficult. It was oftentimes I had lost seventy eight pounds or some of the weekend from not eating during prospecting phasees feet bleeding, But it was mentally as much of a chess match as it was.
Absolutely you right that you retired in twenty nineteen, and you had a proud moment when your daughter, one of your daughters, became an ATF agent herself.
Yeah, my youngest. I presented her with my badge upon her graduation from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and it was a very proud moment and she I'm sure we'll go on to chat her own investigative course, and I think she's going to be a terrific agent.
You have some of the souvenirs from your time as a prospect for the Pagans, and you also do consulting and also just talk about your experiences. Tell us this a little bit about that before we say so long.
So you know, for me, I do talk to law enforcement groups, and I do it for a purpose of, you know, trying to encourage others to do the same type of work. I think it is is one of the one of the tactics that can be used to get to the higher echelons, to get to the leadership, because oftentimes they insulate themselves and you're not getting there unless you do these types of investigations. And so it
is a big commitment. Agencies, you know, shy away from this because there they are high risk, you know, both for the agents, but there's all sorts of things that can go wrong during the course of these investigations that have in the past. So I try to encourage folks to not shy away from it, to take this on
and really look at these groups. They're extremely violent and they recavoc in the areas that they are in, and that we owe it to you, to these citizens to do what we can to eliminate these grips.
Well, I want to thank you very much. It was a very courageous and very fascinating book. Riding with Evil taking down the notorious Pagan Motorcycle Gang with former ATF agent and author Ken Croke. Thank you so much for this interview, Ken Croke, you have a great evening, good night, Thank you.
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