They capture them up. The girls. They send them to Saudi Arabia and are slaves for the rest of their lives.
PIGPEN BERRY on Florida Outlaws
Pigpen’s digestive system had barely settled from its encounter with the bird feathers in Thunder Bay when he hightailed it south to Florida, his new home. Pigpen was an unlikely snowbird, migrating south before he could be arrested on pending charges for attempted murder and wounding.
The Outlaws had agreed to hide Pigpen as part of a new fugitive exchange program between the two clubs. His legal name was changed to “Peter Ray Johnson” and his street name was changed to “Garbage.” “They said I was supposed to get ID and be looked after,” Pigpen recalled.
In Florida, Pigpen soon witnessed things so disgusting that even he wouldn’t do them. One was kidnapping young girls for sale in the overseas sex trade. “They capture them up,” he said. “The girls. They send them to Saudi Arabia and are slaves for the rest of their lives. Kids are captured up. I said, ‘I don’t want to get into that.’ ”
Outlaws who met inside the fortified walls of the Hollywood, Florida, clubhouse also made money from body rubs, topless dancers, hookers and drugs. Problem workers were sometimes beaten and murdered. Hardcore bikers from Canada were not strangers to lethal violence, but the intensity of Southern business left Pigpen numb and suspicious. “Down there, they played the game for keeps,” Pigpen said.
It wasn’t just a sense of brotherhood that inspired the Outlaws to welcome Pigpen into their ranks. In 1974, tensions between the Outlaws and Hells Angels in the United States escalated into open street warfare. As the Hells Angels tried to push into Florida, Outlaws began wearing patches that read “ADIOS” for “Angels Die in Outlaw States.”
It was common for Pigpen to ride around with a machine gun across the front of his Harley, a .44 strapped to his chest, and two more pistols behind his back. That was just prudent in Pigpen’s new world. “Down there, everybody’s got guns,” he said.
When Pigpen’s Canadian friends Larry Hurren and Sweet Kid came down for a visit, they were struck by how bikers there seemed to all ride in packs, and how, when a strange car went by, bikers naturally reached for a firearm.
During one ride through Hollywood, a van pulled alongside Pigpen and its doors swung open. As the guns came out, Pigpen recognized a biker named Swampy and some of his associates. Pigpen took two bullets in his chest, near his heart, but managed to return fire.
As the war escalated, Pigpen found himself making more rides into North Carolina, home of the Fort Bragg army base, Pope air force base and Camp Lejeune marine base. Pigpen noted that seven members of the Lexington, North Carolina, chapter of the Outlaws were members of the elite Special Forces unit, known as the Green Berets. Their skills included guerilla warfare, a useful background given the Southern biker climate.
While hiding out, Pigpen supported himself by stealing cars and yachts on their trailers. Other Outlaws were heavily into running prostitution rings and selling cocaine, designer drugs, marijuana and methamphetamines. For many of the bikers, selling drugs was vastly preferable to running women. It wasn’t so much an ethical issue as a practical one. Drugs paid more, took up less space and they didn’t talk back or squeal to authorities. They also didn’t need to eat. As slovenly as Pigpen’s new companions were, they did have a crude business sense. “They’re well organized,” he said. “They made money big-time.”
Guindon, curious, decided to visit the Florida Outlaws around this time. “I just wanted to see what the other side looked like. And it didn’t impress me. They think their shit doesn’t smell.” He considered many of the Florida Outlaws to be anti-Canadian and spoiling for some kind of a fight, just for the sake of fighting. “You had to be careful,” he said.
He made a point of not losing himself to the partying. “I don’t party in a sense. I don’t drink. I definitely wouldn’t do drugs down there. You don’t know what kind of shit you’d get. They might give you the wrong fucking dosage. Better to be careful than sorry later. If you can keep your faculties, you’re okay.”
Despite his aspirations to expand Satan’s Choice, maybe even into the United States, the gun culture there gave him pause. He also wondered about police informants within the American biker ranks. He thought it would be hard to pick them out, since so many American bikers were ex-servicemen and acted like yes-sir, no-sir cops or soldiers to begin with. “Most guys are military. You don’t know where they’re coming from.”
During his visit to Florida, Guindon met up with Big Jim Nolan, a talkative, charming and cold-blooded Outlaws leader. Big Jim was a pretty good guitar player and had been his school’s valedictorian. More importantly, he said that he would rather be an Outlaw in prison than just some jerk on the streets. That statement pretty much captured his life view.
Guindon respected the power of Outlaws like Nolan, but he didn’t want his Canadian club to fall under their thumb. He and his members had built a viable, powerful all-Canadian club, and they weren’t about to be swallowed up in some gigantic American enterprise. Guindon was willing, however, to lend limited support to the Outlaws’ fight with the Hells Angels and the Warlocks, a southern U.S. club founded by ex–U.S. Navy servicemen, whose mottos include, “Our business is none of your fucking business.”
The Outlaws were curious about what was going on up in Canada, in the land of Pigpen. During one Florida meeting, a member remarked, “They have niggers in the club up there.” Big Jim smacked him in the head, but it wasn’t to promote civil rights or political correctness. He was simply placating the Canadians and keeping business options open.
Stairway Harry Henderson, an Outlaws president from Dayton, Ohio, had already tried to pull the Satan’s Choice en masse over to his club. Henderson offered to let the Satan’s Choice into the Outlaws without probation in a patch-for-patch deal. While some others might consider the offer an honour, Guindon turned it down flat.
Meanwhile, the Outlaws supplied the Choice with weapons, which were always useful considering the club’s challenging push into Quebec. For Kirby, guns were also a business opportunity. “They were all carrying guns, those guys down there,” Kirby said. “That was my business, selling guns.”
If business kept the Outlaws friendly toward their northern peers, Pigpen’s crude antics were having the opposite effect. His moralistic stance on the sex trade didn’t help either. “They didn’t like him at all,” Guindon said. “He was getting away with it up here. Down there, I don’t think they took much to him.” It wasn’t long until a few of the Outlaws wanted to kill Pigpen. “They couldn’t stand his fucking bullshit,” Guindon said. “They thought he was totally crazy.”
As Pigpen rankled his American hosts, the Choice reciprocated by hiding Big Jim Nolan in Ontario as he fled from American authorities, who were investigating him on firearms offences. Big Jim ended up near Kitchener, where the Choice had a strong presence. He didn’t join a local club because he didn’t want to attract police attention, and only a couple Choice members knew his new identity and whereabouts.
Bodies kept falling in Montreal, and those American guns were proving more and more useful. One Choice member didn’t bother to check the peephole before answering a knock at his front door. He was shot dead with a .45. Another member was found hanging dead in a motel. The bloody evidence of torture made it clear his death wasn’t a suicide.
The Popeyes and Satan’s Choice were feuding, and peace was nowhere on the horizon.