After the spate of publicity the Hells Angels received in 1965, Barger had the club's name copyrighted. I think it was a devastating blow to the government, and I couldnt be happier with the verdict except if I had been found innocent myself. Barger left Arizona in October 2016, returning to the Oakland chapter. [55], By 1978, the Hells Angels had chapters in Nebraska, Massachusetts, Ohio, New York, Connecticut, North Carolina and South Carolina. "[19] The incident led to a collection of students, left-wing political groups, and labor unions led by Allen Ginsberg and Jerry Rubin meeting with motorcycle club representatives, headed by the president of the Sacramento Hells Angels chapter, in a cafeteria at San Jose State College, seeking assurance that a planned Vietnam Day Committee protest march in Oakland on November 20, 1965 would go undisturbed. Birthday, "Hells Angels founder Sonny Barger dies at 83", "Sonny Barger, famous Hells Angel and bestselling author, dead at 83 of cancer", Hells Angels motorcycle club leader Sonny Barger dies at age 83, Hells Angels want to hold Sonny Barger memorial service at Oakland Coliseum, "An estimated 7,000 attend funeral for Hells Angels leader Ralph "Sonny" Barger at Stockton 99 Speedway", "Tucker Carlson gives speech at Sonny Barger's funeral in Northern California", "Look Homeward Angelcycle Icon Sonny Barger Kick-Starts Life as a Free Man by Violating Parole", "Hell's author; Legendary bad-ass biker Sonny Barger and his roaring Harley are burnin' up the highways on a uh book tour? [35] He blamed the Rolling Stones' extended delay before making an onstage appearance for worsening the hostility of the crowd, and said the Hells Angels refused to act as bodyguards for "a bunch of sissy, marble-mouthed prima donnas" when the band asked the bikers to escort them to the stage. [7] He authored five books, and appeared on television and in film. Le gang de motards "Hells Angels" a t fond par Barger, qui l'on attribue le lancement de la premire branche amricaine du gang. Consequently, due to his vocal cords being removed, Barger learned to vocalize using the muscles in his esophagus. Barger died back in June after a short battle with cancer. Barger had liked the discipline, masculine camaraderie, and learning how to disassemble weapons. Sonny Barger wife. [6] Following a three-month-trial, the longest ever in the history of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, Barger and O'Farrell were convicted on October 28, 1988, on the felony charge of conspiracy to transport and receive explosives in interstate commerce with intent to kill and damage buildings. Sonny Barger's Net Worth. [94] The agreement also applied to Canada with the Outlaws agreeing to provide no assistance to the Rock Machine in return for peace with the Hells Angels in the United States. On top of his work representing the Hells Angels organization, Berger . Ad vertisement from shop TonakTradingCo. Zorana and Sonny had married in 2005, the year he wrote Freedom: Credos From the Road, a compendium of his wisdom and guide to life. On June 30, 2022, Sonny's Facebook post announced his passing. Hood and Jarman told police that the incident was merely an initiation hazing. [116] Instead, Barger's funeral was held at a motorsports racetrack in Stockton on September 24, 2022. [23], Barger and his wife were among 33 members and associates of the Hells Angels' Oakland, San Francisco, Marin County, San Jose, Los Angeles, and Vallejo chapters indicted on Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) statutes on June 13, 1979. The Oakland police reportedly stood aside and let the attack commence, whereas the Berkeley police intervened to stop the bikers from assaulting the protesters. [7] When students at the University of California, Berkeley announced an anti-Vietnam War rally, the Oakland Hells Angels denounced the rally as "a despicable un-American activity". [32] Barger married Gruhlke while he was incarcerated at Folsom State Prison in 1973. [28] Hilliard also testified that Barger had offered "to deliver the bagged body of a leftist for every Angel released from jail". Sonny Barger tied knots with Zorana Berger in the year 2005 who they have been together for a long time since they came together. We became isolated". Christie believed Bowman was persuaded to abandon a truce with the Hells Angels by one of his lieutenants, Kevin "Spike" O'Neill, who thought agreeing to a ceasefire would make the Outlaws appear weak. As he was a former felon, both were illegal. [7] Barger would later state that Hunter fired a shot that struck a Hells Angels member with what he described as "just a flesh wound. Though law enforcement saw the Angels as more of a gang than a club, in the 1960s the media latched on to Barger (pronounced Bar-gurr), selling the outlaw image to the world as a form of countercultural protest that took celluloid form in films such as Easy Rider (1969). I've lived a long and good life filled with adventure. Son of a mother, Kathryn Carmella Barger, and father, Ralph Hubert Barger, Sonny Barger had a rough childhood. [57] According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Hells Angels and the Outlaws were engaged in a conflict over control of the methamphetamine trade in the United States and Canada. By now, Barger had given up his job as a machinist, and taken advantage of the publicity to work as a technical adviser in exploitation biker movies, beginning with Roger Cormans Wild Angels (1966), starring Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra. By now he was being arrested regularly, for marijuana possession or assault with a deadly weapon. [83][84] Although the Outlaws failed to kill either man, a number of Hells Angels-owned businesses in southern California were firebombed. June 30, 2022, 4:54 PM. [1] Between 1966 and 1973, the majority of his legitimate personal income was derived from advising various film projects. [66], Operation CACUS concluded on November 10, 1987, when 38 Hells Angels members and associates in Alaska, California, Kentucky, North Carolina and South Carolina were arrested on various narcotics, weapons, explosives, and conspiracy charges. "[72], On March 10, 1989, Barger was sentenced to 57 months' imprisonment at the Federal Correctional Institution, Phoenix in Arizona. When he was just four years old, his mother left him . And Bargers dream of patriotic bikers as guerrillas was given life on film in The Losers (1970), where members of the Devils Advocates take armoured choppers to rescue a CIA agent held in Cambodia. He was an author and appeared on TV and in film, on top of being a founder of the Oakland charter motorcycle group . [16] According to U.S. Attorney William Hunter, the "cornerstone" of the Hells Angels' drug enterprise was the "largescale manufacture and mass distribution of methamphetamine". "[7] On January 23, 1991, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld Barger's convictions, stating that granting him amnesty "would greatly intrude into the law enforcement functions of the executive branches of federal and state governments". With warfare between gangs intensifying, in 2002 he tried to organise a peace conference at the Laughlin River Run rally in Nevada, but a battle between Hells Angels and Mongols left three dead, and the conference was cancelled. Box 2921 Toggle navigation. That claim was revised to using the gun to keep the band playing after the violence, which can be seen in the 1970 documentary Gimme Shelter, had begun. In 1979 Barger was one of 33 people charged with racketeering under federal Rico (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) laws. Sentenced to 10 years to life, he served four and a half years at Folsom prison, and reputedly continued to run the Angels from his cell, and to marry his second wife, Sharon, there. [20] Barger justified the male only ruling under the grounds that female Hells Angels were less able to defend themselves against rival bikers looking to steal their patches. "[7], Barger referred to the 1970s as "a gangster era for" the Hells Angels, writing in his autobiography: "The other clubs tried to take our [reputation] from us. Tait called Barger on November 9, 1987, and reported that he had accomplished his mission. [4][7], The dispute between the Hells Angels and the Rolling Stones was compounded when the band refused to compensate the Angels for $50,000 in legal fees accrued by the club in the trial of Alan Passaro, who was acquitted of Hunter's murder on the grounds of self-defense. Despite establishing a relationship with the police that led to the Angels trading weapons for arrested members, Bargers rap sheet grew. [7] At Christmas 1989, he sent one of the prosecutors in the case, assistant U.S. attorney Cleve Gambill, a card from prison, showing him posing on a towel as if he were on the beach, with the message: "Nice weather. The Hells Angels were incorporated as a nonprofit corporation in 1966. His criminal record began in 1963 after he was arrested for possession of marijuana. [29] He denied, however, that authorities permitted crimes committed by the Hells Angels. [22], On January 22, 1972, Barger and four other Hells Angels Russell Beyea, Bobby "Durt" England, "Oakland" Gary Popkin and Bert Stefanson were traveling through Redwood Regional Park in two cars, a Pontiac and a Cadillac, when they were pursued in a high-speed chase by park rangers, who suspected the occupants of the vehicles of poaching. As the longtime president of the Hells Angels motorcycle club, Sonny Barger, who has died aged 83, was the epitome of the outlaw biker. Barger's testimony challenged earlier assertions by government witnesses who testified that Anthony Benesh, a motorcyclist who was shot dead in Austin on March 18, 2006, after attempting to establish a Hells Angels chapter in the city, was killed by Bandidos members because he had ignored the club's warnings to not set up a HAMC chapter in Texas. [23] Prosecutors claimed that the Angels accumulated $160,000 per day in street sales of the drug. Barger reportedly celebrated his 50th birthday in the midst of the trial by partying and smoking marijuana at the home of Thomas Clay, Michael O'Farrell's lawyer, in Goshen, Kentucky. Also, you will learn more exciting things about Sonny Barger in the given sections. An estimated 7,000 people attended, and the event was peaceful. [19], According to George Wethern who later testified against the club and entered the Federal Witness Protection Program in his 1978 book A Wayward Angel, Barger convened a meeting of the leaders of the Hells Angels and other California motorcycle clubs in 1960 in which the various clubs parleyed over the mutual problem of police harassment. [16] When Otto Friedli, the founder of the original San Bernardino Hells Angels chapter, was imprisoned in 1958, Barger was proclaimed de facto national president. When Tait informed Barger in a phone conversation that the FBI was investigating the package he had mailed to Webb's sister, Barger proposed the alibi that the package contained sympathy cards. A team of Outlaws members were sent to California in early 1995 to carry out surveillance ahead of the assassination of either Barger or Christie. The Rough Rider: Entrepreneur. One of our subscribers went to Sonny Barger's funeral. [51] The bombings prompted the California Department of Justice to issue a warning to police departments that the Angels were engaged on a campaign to eliminate law enforcement personnel who investigated their drug activities. [59], In 1983, Barger was diagnosed with throat cancer and temporarily handed control of the club over to his second-in-command, Michael O'Farrell, while he received and recovered from treatment. [21][66] Traveling the country at government expense, Tait made documented purchases of firearms, explosives, and drugs from various Hells Angels chapters. [24] The Angels maintained that the attack was carried out "in the interest of public safety and the protection of the good name of Oakland, California. Two years later Barger appeared in Tom Wolfes Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test when the author and counterculture figure Ken Kesey invited the Oakland Angels to a party; Kesey introduced the bikers to LSD. Anthony Tait, the government's key witness in the case, was housed in a safehouse in the Louisville suburb of Prospect during the trial, where he was guarded by an FBI SWAT team. Barger's death was announced on his Facebook page late Wednesday. [7] On July 2, 1980, following an eight-month trial in which 194 witnesses testified, a mistrial was declared when a jury failed to reach a verdict on counts against eighteen defendants. [1], Ralph Hubert Barger, Jr. was born in Modesto, California, on October 8, 1938, the son of Kathryn Carmella (ne Ritch) and Ralph Hubert Barger. [12][16][107], On March 7, 2003, Barger was arrested by Maricopa County Sheriff's Office deputies after a reported domestic dispute with his wife and stepdaughter at their home in New River, Arizona. The Appeals Court agreed with the government's position that its conduct was necessary due to the Hells Angels' violent history, and rejected Barger's argument that the government had committed entrapment because it deemed the conspiracy to have been originated by the Hells Angels themselves. [39] In March 1983, Clarence "Butch" Crouch, a founding member of the Hells Angels' Cleveland chapter, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the club had an "open contract" on members of the Rolling Stones and had made two failed attempts on the life of Mick Jagger. [12], In 1983, Barger was diagnosed with throat cancer after years of heavy smoking. [7] To celebrate the end of his parole, he held another private party in Livermore on November 6, 1994, which was attended by approximately 700 guests, including the politicians Gary Condit and Ben Nighthorse Campbell. In 1969, he began a relationship with Sharon Gruhlke, a former beauty queen from Livermore. [24] He went on to read out a telegram sent to President Lyndon B. Johnson, reading: "I volunteer a group of loyal Americans for behind the line duty in Vietnam. [111], Barger underwent surgery as a result of prostate cancer in 2012. [5][12] Barger grew up in Oakland in the post-war era, during which time the city's shipbuilding and automobile industries went into decline, leading to a significant rise in unemployment. OneofaKindStoopSale (634) $350.00 Sonny Barger Oakland Hells Angels Founder with Others - 8X10 or 11X14 Photo (YW-002) HistoricalMedia (4,525) $9.99 $13.32 (25% off) FREE shipping Fourteen months later he was discharged honourably, as he had lied about his age to join without parental permission. And I'm sure the government makes a living off of us. Barger claimed the spectators had provoked the violence by damaging the Angels bikes; but he also claimed that the crowd had grown restless as the Stones were late and he had held a gun to Keith Richards face to get them to start. He married his last wife, Zorana, on June 25, 2005, and she was with him at the time of his passing. [48] On December 5, 1977, Barger opened the first Hells Angels chapter in Canada and awarded the Canadian Hells Angels national president Yves Buteau the right to wear a Hells Angels jacket with the word "International" written on the bottom a great honor within the world of the Hells Angels where jackets normally list only the state in which the Hells Angel lives in. Welcome to Sonny's online store. They hated each other. His first wife, Elsie Mae (nee George), had died of an embolism in 1967 after a then illegal abortion. The meeting was canceled, however, as a result of the River Run riot, a confrontation between members of the Hells Angels and the Mongols biker gang at the rally which ended with three deaths.[104]. Unless you cross him. Just like I'm sure some cops have sold methamphetamines. I'll usually say "Fuck Harley-Davidson." This is not surprising. He was among the motorcycle club's most visible members for decades. It was something he had earned, but also an image he cultivated with charisma and shrewdness, turning Hells Angels into a worldwide brand. He and Tait discussed retaliation against the Outlaws on several occasions, and Tait encouraged Barger to travel to Alaska to provide guidance to the Anchorage Hells Angels chapter on retributive action. We really missed the boat not switching over to the Japanese models when they began building bigger bikes. In December 1969 the Angels were hired by the Rolling Stones to provide security at the Altamont free festival. Sons Of Anarchy fans are curious to know what episodes the late Hells Angles legend Sonny Barger featured in amid news of his passing. Ralph "Sonny" Barger, Hell's Angel[100], Barger was present at the Hellraiser Ball, a tattoo and motorcycle trade exposition in Plainview, New York sponsored by the Long Island chapter of the HAMC, which was ambushed by dozens of members of the rival Pagans motorcycle gang on February 23, 2002, resulting in one biker being killed and at least ten injured. [15], In 1956, Barger joined his first motorcycle club, the Oakland Panthers, which he founded with a group of fellow military veterans. Although I've had a public persona for decades, i've mostly enjoyed special time with my club brothers, my family, and close friends. The postwar image of motorcycle gangs was established by the 1953 movie The Wild One. 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