TERRY HAD JUST TASTED THE MOST BITTER PILL of his life. At twenty-seven, four of his club brothers were on death row, wars with other clubs were ongoing, disputes continued within the Vagos organization, and violence lurked beyond every turn. Toughing it out on the streets with his minimal education was a roll of the dice at best. As quickly as he faced a new situation, society changed and laws changed. He grappled with raising his son, Boomer, as a single dad, running and learning club business, and trying to keep his home together while surrounded in a blanket of turmoil.
Ten days before the Vagos were scheduled to die, the assistant warden asked Ron about his last meal and any other final requests.
The convicted Vagos’s execution was set for August 1974. As of 2010, capital judgments were appealed automatically and execution dates would not be etched in iron until after the appeal, but not in 1974. The New Mexico death penalty law had been rescinded in 1972, but it was replaced by a new capital-punishment law presumed to guarantee unbiased application of the death penalty by making execution mandatory for all first-degree murder convictions.
This case tested the constitutionality of the new law. If it had not been challenged on constitutional grounds, the then-recently reinstated New Mexico death penalty statute would be construed as having received the U.S. Supreme Court’s seal of approval.
The four brothers sat on death row in the New Mexico State Penitentiary. They were kept in an area nicknamed the Dungeon Hole, a punishment chamber at the prison. Problem inmates were stripped naked and left for days in the darkness there, in solitary confinement, with only a hole in the floor for a toilet.
Ten days before the Vagos were scheduled to die, the assistant warden asked Ron about his last meal and any other final requests.
“I want to hold your hand when they place me in the gas chamber and drop the pellets,” he replied.
“I was being a smartass,” Ron said. “I made a pledge that I wasn’t going to make it easy for them.”
Nine days before their scheduled rendezvous with the cyanide gas pellets, their attorneys filed an appeal. They asked for a new trial, citing the judge’s failure to sequester the jury and prejudicial pretrial publicity.
“That stayed our execution, temporarily,” Ron said. “They couldn’t kill us until the court ruled on the appeal.”
The system continued to try to break the brothers down. Prison guards beat them, prevented them from sending or receiving any form of communication, and the assistant district attorney promised that if any of them fingered the others, he would be set free. Doc started to lose it.
“He blamed the whole incident on us,” said Ron.
Sandman was coming apart, and his tears stained his many letters to his girlfriend.
A trustee strolled past their cells and whispered, “Gross said to tell you, if you’re ready to talk, drop him a kite.”
Fortunately two reporters from the Detroit News started snooping around. When one of Doc’s former girlfriends contacted the paper about the case, the paper took a personal interest.
The newspaper received additional complaints from Detroit residents. The paper’s managing editor, Boyd Simmons, assigned two reporters to the case: Stephen Cain and Douglas Glazier. Albuquerque authorities wouldn’t help; they denied Glazier access to documents and ran him out of town. He returned and checked into a different motel.
Heavner tried to call her repeatedly and sent her threatening news clippings, one about a girl’s body discovered in the mountains near Albuquerque.
The appeal date was moved until January of 1975, and on the 27th of that month the death sentences were stayed pending an appeal to the Supreme Court. Sgt. Donald Heavner, liaison for the district attorney, tried to question Judy Weyer, but he’d lost contact with her. The attorney for the brothers, Hank Farrah, said Weyer was key to their new trial and the only witness scheduled to testify. He also told the local paper that Jim Bowman, a former Albuquerque Police Department officer, might come forward in defense of the Vagos.
Detroit News reporter Stephen Cain found Judy Weyer in Minnesota. She had reunited with her husband and four children and was expecting another child. She was reluctant to talk to anyone. Heavner tried to call her repeatedly and sent her threatening news clippings, one about a girl’s body discovered in the mountains near Albuquerque.
Judy was scared, but Cain cut a deal with her to tell him the truth. In a series of taped interviews, Judith spoke of the marathon interview sessions and the incessant trial coaching. Cain’s Detroit News story broke on December 12, 1974. Additional weekly stories were published well into 1975. Judy recanted her entire testimony, and admitted that she had never seen William Velten until she was shown the police photographs. On January 27, the appellate defense team filed a special petition requesting a new trial.
This became a case of bad authorities against innocent bikers who would not give up. The sheriff’s department went bad, then the district attorney’s office, followed by Judge Riordan, who ultimately turned the case over to Judge H. Verne Payne. And then there was the harsh prison system.
In a letter to the Detroit News reporters, Ron said, “The prison apparently isn’t letting you see us for two reasons. One, the prison here seems to be working with the D.A. and has openly aborted previous attempts by us to get help to prove our innocence. Two, the prison is afraid we will disclose the way we are being treated here and the conditions of our confinement.”
Subsequently Ron was beaten by guards with leather bags full of lead pellets, and he couldn’t walk for two weeks. Terry, the young leader in California, quickly learned that the most cold-blooded, fiendish crimes were inflicted by authorities gone bad.
Subsequently Ron was beaten by guards with leather bags full of lead pellets, and he couldn’t walk for two weeks.
On March 31, 1975, a headline on the front page of the Albuquerque Tribune read, “I Lied, Star Witness Sobs.” While bawling her eyes out Judith testified, “I couldn’t live with the big lie anymore. I was not present when William Velten was killed. I don’t know who killed him.”
She was told not to testify by her attorney, C.A. Bowerman, because she could be criminally prosecuted for perjury, but she insisted. The local cops had forced her to testify against the Vagos, she said. They used every immoral means possible, from bribery to extortion.
“They kept after me,” Judy said. “They kept putting things in my mouth. They went on and on,” until she testified for the prosecution. The audacity of authorities to take justice into their own hands had reached criminal levels.
She told the paper that she was interviewed by the police, “almost every day, constantly, sometimes for eight or nine hours. They (the officers) told me they knew for sure the defendants did it.”
But was that the case? The cops told her they would regain custody of her kids if she testified for the prosecution.
During the March appeal hearing, she testified that she didn’t witness the murder. “They laughed at me,” she said. She also told the court about her erroneous personal injury testimony during the previous trial. She wasn’t cut under her breasts by the outlaws or raped by them.
Another twist surfaced while the brothers sat on death row. An inmate at the New Mexico state pen testified on April 2 about his homosexual lover. According to Eugene Greer, who was serving time for robbery in western New Mexico, I.D. Bickford claimed he had killed Velten, and he had described the murder while the two occupied adjoining cells.
The testimony surfaced in front of District Judge William Riordan on the third day of a hearing for a new trial. The attorneys for the defense based their case for a new trial on Greer’s statements and the recantation of Judy Weyer, the only supposed eyewitness.
Unfortunately, during questioning by District Attorney James L. Brandenburg, Greer admitted speaking to one of the convicted men through a vent at the penitentiary. The judged denied a new trial, and then turned the case over to Judge Payne.
“After re-reading the trial testimony and reviewing the testimony at this hearing,” said the judge, “I have come to the conclusion that Mrs. Weyer perjured herself at this hearing when she said she did not witness the killing of William Velten Jr. by the defendants.”
The brothers were once more placed on death row while the slippery wheels of justice turned in reverse.