Two faces of the Bandidos: Weekend road warriors or criminal gang?

WACO, Texas – Law-abiding weekend warriors with a penchant for fast bikes? Or violent, meth-fueled rabble-rousers with a taste for crime and guns?

Defining the Bandidos Outlaw Motorcycle Gang at the center of last weekend's bloody brawl here that left nine dead and sent 18 to the hospital is a tricky endeavor and depends on who's asked.

"There's no reason for anyone to be in fear of them at all," said Edward Winterhalder, a former high-ranking Bandidos member who now writes books and screenplays about motorcycle culture. "It was always about having a good time."

Police are still processing the 170 suspects they've arrested and combing through the carnage and weapons left behind at the Twin Peaks restaurant here, where police say a fight between rival gangs escalated into a shootout. The Bandidos, as organizers at the meeting that brought rival gangs together, were there in force.

It was one of the single deadliest clashes between motorcycle gangs known to area law enforcement and gang members.

"There's blood evidence everywhere," Waco Police Spokesman Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said.

The Bandidos began in Texas in 1966 by Vietnam veteran Donald Chambers and has grown to about 900 members and 93 chapters, according to the FBI. The group itself claims it has 200 chapters with more than 2,500 members in 16 countries.

But unlike the Wild West days of the 1960s and '70s, when outlaw motorcycle gangs like the Bandidos, Hell's Angels and Outlaws defiantly flouted the law, today's groups prefer to keep a much lower profile, said James Quinn, a University of North Texas professor who has studied and written about outlaw motorcycle gangs.

Today, Bandidos – known as part of the "1%ers" of motorcycle gangs – have a fraternal element to them, such as organizing toy drives and staging motorcycle races, and a gang-like element, where members stick up for one another in the face of threats from rival gangs or police, Quinn said. But they also typically have an organized crime element, where members run drugs or guns for money, he said. Over the past five years, federal agents have indicted more than 20 Bandidos in North Texas on federal drug and weapons charges, he said.

Still, Sunday's outburst of violence is abnormal, Quinn said.

"I wouldn't classify them as Boy Scouts," he said. "But, generally, the public doesn't have much reason to fear them."

The Bandidos, like most other outlaw groups, had been suffering from a decline of membership in recent years, as members age and new ones are slow to join, Quinn, the university professor, said. But given the groups' penchant for recruiting ex-military, the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may soon lead to a boost in membership.

"My guess is we'll see them refilling their ranks," he said.

Winterhalder, 59, began hanging out with the Bandidos in the late 1970s and '80s and was a full member from 1997 to 2003, helping the club expand internationally. In those days, fellow members of his Oklahoma chapter included a pediatrician and a few pensioners, he said. Winterhalder himself ran a successful construction management company. He'd work his job during the week then take off on his motorcycle on the weekends to visit Bandidos in other cities and party with them, at times logging 400 miles a weekend, he said.

Around 70% of his members held regular jobs during the week and partied on the weekends like him, Winterhalder said.

"Are there people in clubs who commit crimes? Yes. Are there people doing drugs? Yes," he said. "But it's disorganized crime. It's not like the mafia."

Law enforcement, however, paints a different picture. The FBI says the Bandidos are involved in transporting and distributing cocaine and marijuana and are involved in the production, transportation and distribution of methamphetamine. In a gang threat assessment released last year, the Texas Department of Public Safety classified the Bandidos as a "Tier 2" gang, along with Bloods, Crips and the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas.

Earlier this decade, the Waco chapter of the Bandidos comprised mostly former military guys, including at least two ex-Army Rangers and one ex-Delta Force operator, according to a former Bandidos member. He asked that his name be withheld to avoid retaliation from the gang. The members used their military training and tactics to intimidate rival gangs, he said.

For cash, members moved marijuana and methamphetamine from Mexico through Texas and dealt in loan sharking and other illicit ventures, raising "hundreds of thousands of dollars," a year, the ex-member said.

Bandidos went everywhere heavily armed and violent clashes were common – against rival gangs, drug dealers and one another. During his five-year tenure with the gang, the ex-member said he attended more than 40 funerals of fellow members.

Members are a mix of Anglo and Hispanic. The San Antonio chapter, for example, has been predominately Hispanic, he said. In Texas alone, the Bandidos have chapters in Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Houston, Austin, Waco, Dallas, Fort Worth, Lubbock, Amarillo and El Paso, covering nearly every corner of the state and blending in with society, he said.

"They're everywhere," the ex-member said. "They're like ghosts."

Despite the illicit activity, Bandidos pride themselves in keeping a low profile and avoiding unwanted attention from law enforcement, not hesitating to rid its ranks of risky members, he said. A common refrain among members: "Three Bandidos could keep a secret if two are dead."

Steve Cook, a police detective from Independence, Mo., got to know the Bandidos well during a yearlong undercover assignment in the Kansas City area. He and a group of other undercover agents created a fake motorcycle gang and posed as a potential "support group" for the Bandidos – or a gang willing to ally itself with the larger outlaw group.

The interaction involved mostly partying with the Bandidos, and Cook said he didn't witness any acts of outward violence from them. The agents' ruse came to an end when Bandidos members handed them applications to fill out and told them they would run background checks on them using the National Crime Information Center – the same system used by police departments, Cook said.

"They're far more organized than you'd think," he said. "They're very sophisticated."