#303 Mel Chancey - Youngest President in Hells Angels History

32:11And I know him from in there. They're super cool. So he come walking down. He goes, what are you doing? You dating little Jenny? And I go, yeah, I'm dating Jenny. She was a couple of years older than me. So that's when I found out that he was part of this motorcycle club called the Hell's Henchman. wow yeah so then i was wide open now my eyes were like because he i kind of like the way he looked he was all jacked up and tatted up and everything like that and that started my journey with the tattoos and i kind of looked up to to john do you remember your first tattoo yeah it's under here it was a tiger a tiger it was a tiger bro it was i i got it obviously i wasn't you know at 16 i was built a little bit because I was already training for a few years I was on the natch now I have I didn't touch any hormones yet until I was 19 so I got a tiger that you know was you know big on my arm at the time but later was like a like you had that big you know so you know I ended up covering that up through the years and stuff like that but that was my first tattoo and then I just kept going from there because you know these guys were all tatted up and in the ride and stuff like that so um before we get too far into the biker stuff yeah you had a child at 16.

33:28six yeah just turning 17 that's a few months before my 17th birthday so yes later on in 16. in a very strict catholic family yes yes and her family was was very close and tight with each other too so it didn't really go over good on either side yeah with her dad wasn't the wasn't the happiest but here we were right and and and i told him i said listen i'm i have a job i work i'm gonna take care of my you know my child i'm gonna take care of you know your daughter and uh and we're gonna be together and that's that's how i started and i you know i poured concrete every day and came home to her and you know she she had a job she worked um at this big food grocery store that we had in our neighborhood she was uh in the butcher's union and she was i was 16 she was just turning 19 two and a half, three years older than me.

34:18So we started that journey together. We got married when I was 20. We got married. And that only lasted a year because now at the age of 20, I was already with the club. I was already with the club and she knew the lifestyle from her neighbor and stuff like that and didn't really want to have any part of that. And I didn't really want to have her have any part of that so so young young with it with the child which is crazy now because you know she's like my mom these days because my mom passed in 2019 at 90 years old sean 90 years old strong believer rosary beads in her hand every time i would leave the house or come come over and visit on the motorcycle my mom loved all the fellas the fellas personally But when she would see us put them jackets on and stuff like that, she'd be like, oh, she just knew that it was, you know, that was the problem there.

35:15That was this mischief, you know. But all the fellows would come over and see my mom at the house and she'd have Italian dinners and lunches and stuff like that. You know, my house was the stomping grounds for a lot of the guys, you know. So, yeah. What is it? I mean, how did you get that news delivered to you as a 16-year-old? You're going to be a dad. um man i'm trying to think that's a good one uh i i remember she was late obviously she was late on her period and uh we took the test and she said i'm pregnant and i said okay it wasn't it didn't shock me like that i said okay yeah let's no fear no huh i said we're gonna have a baby then and back then we didn't know you know we didn't do the the testing a paternity test or or you know to see what the baby was gonna be we didn't know we didn't know what we're having so you know we We had our little girl named her Danielle.

36:07And just we're raising her together through them years, you know. And I say this, I was blessed because Jenny came from a good family. I came from a good family. So when I exited, my daughter Danielle was in good hands. She was raised, you know, from her mother, Jenny, first and foremost, but then from my family and her family, right? So she was good there, you know. And then financially, I was okay to take care of her because now I was already in the club and running the gamut of what we're going to get into and the way I was living. So I was making money. I didn't have to go to work anymore.

36:39So financially, I was there for my daughter. But, you know, I wasn't walking her down the school dances and stuff like that because I was already deep into what we're talking about. So, yeah, so I didn't it didn't even dawn on me a second thought to, you know, do any abortion or anything like that. I said, we're having the baby together and, you know, we're going to raise this baby together. Wow. Not even any fear after the, like, during the birth? Not a hesitation, no, Sean. I was just, I was kind of stoked, you know, like, it ain't nothing I planned for, obviously, right, but when it was there and in front of me, I think that's kind of how I looked at life with everything, you know.

37:20I was one of them guys, well, I'm here and I have to adapt, you know, like I always say about prisoner, like, how'd you do it? I'm like, well, there was no playbook how to go there. Nobody gave me the rules and the playbook of how to do prison time or how to do club stuff. But I was in a situation and I was able to adapt to that situation, you know. Makes sense. Yeah. So let's get into how you got in the club. I know we kind of started. Yeah. A little bit. So. Some guys at the gym. I met them guys at the gym. yep and um i think now i'm probably 18 years old and they invited me down to one of their parties at the clubhouse and i went down when did you start riding uh when i was 16.

38:06you started riding got my first harley when i was 16 dirt bikes and stuff and then i got the first harley when i was 16. so i went down there um seen one of their parties hung out and seen you know all the different people that were there and stuff and just had a good time nobody was grooming me for nothing nobody you were you were supposed to be 21 to get in the club what was going on at the party uh live bands you know full bar you know strippers on the pole the party was open to the public right so it was just you know just a big just a big party right i got to meet the fellows and everything like that and then um they all hung out at a bar that wasn't too far from where i grew up in my neighbor at about five minutes so you know at 18 now i had full facial hair now i was already getting jacked up and training the weights were kicking in and stuff i was bigger i wasn't getting carded everybody thought i was 21 or better you know nobody was guarding me because i had that look to me i had tattoos on me and stuff i didn't look like an 18 year old youngster at that time you know um and then i went back down to their clubhouse you know for they were getting together they were having a run i went down there for the run really got to meet the the fellows in depth you know the guy that was the president for the henchmen and all the all the all the crew that was part of them and uh i just got along with them very good you know and uh and then i remember the the president asking me he's like you want to come around the club huh and i said his name was jerry and i said i do i do i said i think this is a cool thing what you guys got going on here and stuff And, you know, the guy that's on my arm right here, who's Tombstone, we lost Al, he kind of became like my sponsor that was looking out for me, right?

39:50The guy that was going to look out for me. And I remember him telling me, we're going down to a meeting and he said, listen, he goes, you know, you got to be 21 to be in the club. And I said, yeah. And he goes, you know, you're 18 now to get ready to turn 19. He goes, you look older. He goes, so you're 21, right? And I go, yeah, okay. Right? I go, okay, Al. And then when we got in that room and they called me in to where they were having the meeting and one of the fellows said, hey, how old are you? I just looked around that room, man, and I just got this like pit in my stomach and I'm like, I'm almost ready.

40:26I'm almost turning 19. And then they looked at Al and he goes, I said, oh, it's not his fault. I go, he sees me in all the bars and probably thought I was 21 already. I said, but I'm not 21. And they said, okay, well, you can't come into the club until you're 21. Like we have a rule, right? But you can be our friend. And I said, I would love that to keep hanging around with you guys and seeing you guys out and stuff like that. So I concentrated on working, you know, pouring concrete. I loved pouring concrete. The boss I had, me and him became very close. His name's Merrill Healy. And I became like a little brother to him.

40:59He was 10 years older than me. And he taught me that concrete game. And I loved pouring concrete. it was physical you know i would pour concrete all day i would go train as soon as i was done and then i go home and you know shower off and go to bed and get back up and do the same thing so not only was i building my body with the weights i was out humping forms and pouring driveways and foundations and stuff so it was great exercise for me all the way around and making great money back then you know so and that's how i was able to afford you know the the car and the bike and everything like that so now i go back to a party and i'm right just getting ready to turn 20 and 20 years old and the one guy asked me he goes well how old are you now mel and i just seen you last year right i'm 20 and i remember him saying he goes man you're gonna age terrible he goes you look like you're 30.

41:50i had a goatee and i had it long sean i had it like this and it was to a point kind of like the wrestler jim the anvil nightheart because i was a wrestling fan growing up a wrestling fan too, you know. And I had it pointed like that. And they said, man, you're down here, you come to the parties, you come and hang out. They said, all right, listen, you can be 21 here soon. Let's make it official. You want to become an official hang around? And I said, I do. So I became an official hang around. So when the nights they had their meetings, I would be down at the clubhouse outside, not previous to the meetings, I'd be outside, you know, cleaning up the clubhouse, making sure, doing the duties and stuff like that, you know.

42:27And it was only a around for a couple months and they seen that you know my head was into this hair you know and uh then i became an official prospect and you know and at the time what does the hang around mean what is the definition of that so the hang around is you come around you come to the parties you come to the meetings you know you're not in the meetings but you get to know the guys you're there you know you're kind of doing any kind of work you i was outside watching the bikes while they were inside at the meetings when we used to go to the bars i would you know if a member went to the bathroom might stand outside the bathroom making sure he was okay in there nobody was gonna get him when he was vulnerable um same thing as a prospect you know you're just not officially a prospect you do a hang around status you know and that could last an indoctrination period yes and that could last up until they have to vote on it you know if you become a prospect to become a prospect so is it a known is it is it known you're going to become a prospect that's your goal on a hang around yeah you become the hang around and it's your goal to become a prospect then to become a member and that that period could take you know i've seen it take years with guys i've seen it take years you know with me i was a hang around a few months then i was a prospect and uh at the time the the club the house henchmen in chicago they were having a little squirmish with another uh motorcycle club by the name of the dc eagles at our club in chicago and it was just the i say the schoolyard stuff, seeing each other in bars, fighting, no shootings, no bombings, nothing what became later.

43:59It was just a little tit for tat stuff. And as a prospect and being young, I was out and wanting to be part of that. So I remember being out till four or five o 'clock in the morning with the fellows, going home, making my lunch for the day and getting on my job site at 6 37 in the morning but at 20 years old you know you're full of it so you can do all that right and um you know and now i'm learned what testosterone was at 19 from from some of the fellows in the gym and i started taking some testosterone and a few anabolics the decas and stuff like that and i grew my dad was a bigger frame guy not from bodybuilding just a bigger frame guy.

44:42I always had a good appetite. I was pouring concrete. I was physically just growing. So now I'm five, been five, 10 since I've been like 16, I'm five, 10. And I started out, by the time I was 18, I was probably 180 pounds with abs. I'd look like a surfer kid. And then I just started growing testosterone and the anabolics and the way I could eat and the way they showed me to train you know by the time i was 24 years old i was 275 pounds just you've seen the old pictures just massive you know but that bodybuilding was my love i love to train i love to go pour the concrete you know so now as i'm prospecting and getting through all that and you know what hold on what was it about what drew you to them i mean i got a couple questions yeah one what What was it about them that really drew you in?

45:35I mean, you're coming from a strict Catholic family. Yeah. I grew up Catholic. I know what that's all about. How did you... That brother... What did your dad do? My dad ran a big company. It was called Carson Perry Scott's. Remember the stores Carson's back in the day? He ran the warehouse division of this, so my dad was a hard worker. He was a foreman, a boss of all this big warehouse. You know, my baseball coach. just work work my dad was a very very hard worker provider so yeah I'd seen that and that's I think where I did adopted that when I got into the concrete I was a very hard worker I was doing side jobs with my boss Merrill after working all day and you know extra money doing side jobs I was just a hustler with that I think what drew me to the club is when I seen that I seen these guys now it's you know 1989 I'm 20 and I seen the brotherhood the camaraderie the riding the motorcycles and going to parties, walking in the bars, you know, seeing how people react.

46:35But I seen that tight brotherhood that, that these guys had, that this henchman club had with each other. And I, and I enjoyed that. And they took me in and I was, you know, I was like their little brother, you know, and they showed me the ways. And I don't mean just the violent ways. I mean, the ways of life, you know, you're, you're, you're brother's keeper, you know, your brother's important to you, you know, um, you, you know, you're, you've got your brother's back all the time, right? I mean, I just, they showed me that side of life that I didn't see growing up, you know, even though the family was family, but now I got to see it with a bunch of guys that really loved one another and hung tight with one another, no matter what happened.

47:13One of the guys got, you know, one of the guys got jumped by that, by that D. Segal Club, and the next night they were out returning the favor. So I got to watch that, you know, as the prospect and see it and then to be part of it and you know i was big and strong and they loved having me around because i wanted to run in and do all that first i i just seen it and and got addicted to that okay it was a side of life i didn't know i didn't see any violence growing up so you didn't you didn't you weren't uh getting in fights and all the time at school no not i mean that one incident i did and then what happened but i didn't grow up in that kind a family where my dad was so passive, so passive.

47:52My mom ran the household, you know, and there was no violence in the household that dad at all. My dad and mom never were yelling at each other. They never were screaming at us. We just had a very, you know, close, loving family. So then when I got to see that and I was, you know, get to be part of that and rolling in with a crew of dudes and, you know, beating up this other club and stuff, I just, it just wrapped me into it and i seen it and i liked it and uh i always say i got bit by that violence and and you know running around with the patch on and the womenizing and stuff like that so and then right as i was uh right before i was turning 21 um i became member they made me a member i think i prospected for just a little under a year how did they how did before we go there i mean so they asked you if you wanted to be a hang around what what what is it that you have to do as a hang around to turn into a prospect um be available you know be at the be on call with them guys are calling you up hey we're you we'll see you we're having our meeting next thursday we'd be down here at you know 7 30 7 o 'clock be down here you know being seen getting to know the members through the week guys would call me up and say hey we're going out tonight why don't you jump on the bike and meet us at the Alpine.

49:09Okay, I'll meet you at the Alpine, you know, keep me out. You got a job, right? Yeah, I go to work. What time you go to work? Yeah, 6.37. All right, we'll have you home by five. One of them things, you know, just out running around, getting to know the fellows deeply, you know. And a lot of them fellows grew up on the south side of the city. That guy, John, grew up two doors down from, you know, Jenny. So a lot of them guys were on the south side of the city, a good handful of them, probably a dozen of them were in the south suburbs so i'd get to know them they'd call me up hey we're going to lunch why don't you come meet us for lunch and i'd meet them for lunch and stuff like that so they got to know me pretty fast in that in that hang around period to where they were like hey you know we're gonna make you a prospect we're ready we think you got what it takes to to be a prospect you know now the work starts you know now you gotta be on beck and call you know if some members call and you at two in the morning say hey i need you to come down here my bike broke go get the breakdown truck you know I couldn't tell him I got to get up in three hours they didn't want to hear that you better be there and I was Johnny on the spot I was I was there I just as I was for work and just as I was for everything else I was like this coming into that club what's Jenny think about all this yeah and that's where that story starts so she was not into that and she did not want to have any part of that lifestyle with raising a one and two-year-old daughter.

50:34And she knew what came with that lifestyle, all the nonsense, the violence, and the womanizing. There's a lot of women that come around the motorcycle clubs, right? You're almost like the rock stars of that community, right? And a lot of women around the clubs and stuff. And she's seen that from what John used to do and stuff in the fellows. So she wasn't for that. And then when I seen that I was getting deeper into it, you know, and probably going to become a member, that's when I sat down with her and said, you know, maybe this ain't right for us anymore to do. And she said, well, I'm not willing to throw it away.

51:12Let's see how it goes. Well, then not too long after that, she put a tape recorder. I mean, I mean, I've shot a big tape recorder. Now they got them like this big right i mean a big old tape recorder with the cassette in it she hid it under uh our bed in the house and recorded my phone conversation oh and i was on the phone with a girl oh running around with the with a girl at the time you know so she heard that tape presented it to me and she goes this is exactly what i knew what was going to happen right and i said i couldn't deny it i was right in front of it and i said okay i said maybe it's best off that we you know part up we'll raise our daughter together you got that great family i got the great family and uh little danielle's gonna be okay let's let's let's you know do this so we we got divorced we were married we got divorced you know i think it was about a year and uh and then that's that's where the journey went with her you know what about your parents yeah my parents were they did not like what was going on right because they seen me prioritizing the club you know i did come home and see the family and i I was visiting back to my mom's house and stuff.

52:21I didn't live there, obviously, no more. Had my own place. But they were, I think, concerned. I remember my dad sitting down with me and saying, son, I'm never going to tell you what to do. He said, but I hate to see you end up in the penitentiary or getting something happening to you out late at night. They knew I was out running around late at night. But I still had it together because I wasn't a member yet, and I was still working my job. So they seen me still going to work, still taking care of my daughter, financially seeing her and everything like that. It wasn't until I finally made member and when you make a member, it's got to be 100 % of the vote.

53:04So everybody in that room, and I believe at the time there was about, it had to be about 28, 30 guys that were in that Hell's Henchman chapter in Chicago, 100 % have to vote for you. If one says no, then you don't get your patch that time. You still remain a prospect. The member has to tell you why he said no to you, what you did he didn't like or what was going on. And then you fix things from there and your sponsor would bring you up at another appropriate time. Maybe it'd be a month down the road, three weeks down the road. They'd bring you up to be full member. Again, they'd vote on it and uh and then i i got the 100 vote damn yeah and i was just turning i was 20 turning 21 i was 20 you're in there when they vote you're outside you're outside they call you in the room what do they say when you get in there call you in the room well they kind of they they played like a little to trick on me so i got in there i was i had my vest on and when when you when you're prospect you just have the bottom rocker ours said illinois and on the front we had a tag that said prospect right you didn't have the hell's henchman in the in the center patch just the bottom so i came in the room looking around the room they said hey they want you in the room when the guys came down said they want you in their mill they called me road they gave me the nickname of road because one of the old henchmen when he met me i had to push his bike to get started his battery died so i and he goes hey we're gonna push the bike and he was standing next to it and i said just jump on it i'll push it don't worry about i got you just jump on the bike you know pop it in gear right so he like looked at me he said okay so the bike started he came over and he goes what's your name again and i said mel and he goes is this short from melvin and i go yeah and he goes what kind of name is that and i go well my dad and they named me after my dad he goes uh he goes you look like that dude man that road warrior dude he goes wait was it wasn't his name mel gibson and i go yeah crazy right and i go yeah mel gibson the road warrior he goes you look like that dude because i'm not calling you melvin i'm calling you rose and that's how that name stuck no everybody called me road from that day on that was my nickname through the whole decade of the clubs you know road so um they call me in the room i'm in the room and one of the members says hey man you know we brought you up for your for for membership tonight for your patch we don't think it's going to happen here, you know, so why don't you take that vest off, leave it here.

55:35Nice knowing you, sending it down the road. And I said, you are, huh? And they said, yeah. And I said, look, can I ask you guys a question? What did I do wrong? What did I do? I'm here all the time. I start pleading my case. I go, I'm here all the time. I'm going out. We're in the middle of this fight with this other club, you know, I'm there. I said, I don't understand why you guys would say that, you know, and send me down the road. And the president said, take that vest off. and I'm looking at all these guys with these straight faces, and I'm young, and I'm like, whew, man, all right, and I took the vest off, and they said, the reason why is because you're putting this on, and they held up the top rocker and the center.

56:13We call it the spook. It was a skull head with the hood over it, right, and they held up the spook and the top rocker, and they said, you're a member, and I was like, oh, man, and they all hugged me and stuff, and And of course, we got annihilated that night. Partied for a few days. I got my Hell's Henchman tattooed on me and stuff like that. I got to cover it up now. But I got the Henchman tattooed on me. And then I was officially in the club. 12 years old, you know. How about that felt? It was amazing. It was amazing because, you know, it was something that I did look up to. I did look up to them guys, man.

56:53And I loved them guys. and I loved being around them and that camaraderie and the brotherhood, you know. And that started the journey there, and it wasn't too long, man. It was probably like a year, Sean, a year later. They made me the Sergeant of Arms. Hold on. Before we get into that, can you just give me a breakdown of a Motorcycle Club chapter? What is the structure? What's the chain of command? What are all the jobs? How big is it? Yeah, president, vice president, sergeant of arms, the enforcer for the club, you know, inside the club and outside the club, you know, the enforcer if you got to handle business inside with the fellows.

57:35and of course you know in the outside you're the sergeant of arms enforcer slash enforcer secretary treasurer road captains the road captain's jobs are to make sure your bike's in running order your tires are not flat and bald and everything like that and where we were going to go on the runs they structured the runs no gps back in the day so mapping it out so everybody had a job to do in that structure, you know? Very military, very military, you know? And I knew that military side only because, as we talked earlier, I came from a huge military family. My dad forged his brother's birth certificate when he was 16, Sean, and got in the Korean War.

58:18Wow. 16. Then he ran a platoon by the time he was 18, because he didn't have a great home life. His dad was a pretty rough guy with him, so he wanted to get away. So he was in the Korean War. my uncles were in Vietnam. All my boy cousins were in Afghanistan and Desert Storm. You know, I was the only boy out of the family that didn't join the military. I went in the motorcycle world, right? So I knew that military structure and I seen it here now. You know, when we were out, everybody had a job to do when we were in the public, especially when we were in bars with other motorcycle clubs. A lot of clubs were in the city of Chicago, the Outlaws, these DC Eagles, those five, six prominent clubs.

58:59So we'd be out and they'd be in the same bars as we were. And everything with us was security to make sure we were all safe in case something jumped off. Always had a gun on me. Always had a ball peen hammer in my back pocket, a knife attached to my belt, wore some sap gloves. I had some deer skin gloves and we brought him to this tailor and the shoe leather guy and he put the lead pellets in there. So I had the sap gloves on all the time and just you know constantly ready just to make sure that our brothers were all good when we were out and about because in that world you have to be seen you know you can't have a you're not going to be some prominent motorcycle club and you guys never leave the clubhouse that world who's out and about and running around and you know the dominant ones you know so that structure to me that i seen with them was you know something that i really really enjoyed and like to see you know when they made me the sergeant of arms that was a real big honor for me at that young age you know 21 years old and you know now I'm probably 225 pounds and them guys love that I trained I didn't do any drugs or I drank a little bit here and there but I wasn't you know I've definitely been drunk when I got my patch and had some nights of Jack Daniels and stuff but I wasn't drinking a lot because I bodybuilding was my passion I wanted to eat and train and you You're not doing that, drinking and doing recreational drugs.

1:00:24How many people were in the club? When I got in, Sean, I think there was, in that chapter in Chicago, I think, let's say about 30, 26, 30 guys, I believe. There was another chapter in Rockford, Illinois, which is two hours from Chicago. There was another chapter in South Bend, Indiana, which was two hours east. so all total i'd say there was probably about maybe 75 80 guys in the house henchmen and then three charters that we had what what kind of backgrounds do these guys have a lot of military guys a lot of former military guys um and blue collar guys working class guys you know the president that was before me and the henchmen he um he uh was a mechanic at a big trucking company mac truck it's a big mechanic and stuff so a lot of the a lot of the guys were working you know working normal jobs and you know hanging out and done and doing stuff like that so a lot of different backgrounds in that in clubs you know blue collar though gotcha yeah i mean i did uh the stuff always really interested me especially uh when i started contracting uh for cia started looking into all this stuff.

1:01:42And if I remember right when I was reading about it, it seems like a lot of these clubs got developed right after or around the end of World War II. Yeah, yeah. Because nobody would fit back into society. Yeah. Is that... That's 100 % true. Especially, you know, with the Hells Angels and guys were, you know, in the bomber squadron in World War II, right? In the planes. And you see they had the Hells Angels death from above, they called it. and uh then when they came back in society and you know would live in the life that they lived and you know wanted to you know we're looking to do that they didn't fit in nowhere and that's how the birth of the the clubs i really believe became like that you know these guys started the the club you know they named themselves the hell's angels in 1948 in san verdino california that's 1948 1948 is the birth of the hell's angels and uh san verdino they call at Purdue, California.

1:02:39And, you know, so that was, you know, from the military, the Hells Angels and stuff, you know. So a lot of backgrounds like that, you know, the blue collar guys, the military guys, you know, and all these different clubs, you know, I always say this, the fellows are the same, the patch is different. There's nothing really different, you know, from the outlaws to the angels to the, you know, to the Mongols to the pagans back in my day, right i don't know how it is now i've been gone a long time 20 plus years but it's the same fell as different neighborhoods different spots you know you know if i was uh maybe in grew up in tennessee i would have looked up to to the outlaws you know they were down here back then you know so um i just happened to be part of the henchmen and you know we'll get into that we merged with the hell's angels but uh yeah that was the background of all these guys it was all the same I said, we're all in a likely manner, but that patch and that structure separates us.

1:03:36And sometimes that blurred the lines of what you see now and became them big, like to call them wars, but became them big skirmishes with each other, all over egos. I mean, did anybody or does...

1:03:56It's just so similar to the military, it seems. I'm not trying to compare notes here or backstories or anything, but it's just, I don't know, the draw seems very similar to what attracted me to the SEAL teams, the tattoos, drinking, womanizing, bar fights. wars. Like, it's just, you know, it's all, it's, the culture is very similar. For sure. And does it...

1:04:33Do you look at people's backgrounds within the club and, I mean, how do you get respect in the club? Does anything from a previous life get you any respect or is it all within what you do when you're there? Yeah, it's what you do when you're there. You know, I mean, backgrounds, you know, you could be a scholar, you could be the best seal, the best whatever you were at, you know, but they're going to judge you on how you are and how you act and how you are in the moments and stuff, you know. I mean, I seen a lot of guys come into the club and not make it, you know, just couldn't mentally, you know, run them late hours or, you know, be part of that.

1:05:13And, you know, I had a few personal friends of mine that are my dearest friends to today and two in particular. And, you know, they wanted to come in the club. And now at this time, I'm the president, you know, we already merged to the Angels. But this story, I'm the president. And they came to me and I said, this same for you guys. I said, you see the fun stuff, the running around, the women, the partying, and the red carpets rolling out to us. But you're not seeing when one of our guy's daughters is jumping up in the casket rubbing her father's hair for the last goodbye. And we laugh and joke about it to this day, Sean, with my friend Jamie and Chuck.

1:05:50And I say, yeah, thank God that God had his hand on us all. I said, because you guys would have been doing the penitentiary shuffle with me later in life, right? And, you know, I seen guys that not everybody could make that cut back in the day. You know, it took a lot of dedication, a lot of time. And, you know, being ready for what we seen was coming. I seen the big play coming, you know, especially when we decided we all agreed that we were going to merge and, you know, join the Hells Angels. And right in the backyard of the outlaws who's, you know, started out back in the day. and i think they started out in 35.

1:06:341935 sean yeah i believe that's their start date wow when they started i don't know if you've seen the movie bike riders that was all about you know the the outlaws they were chicago on the top rocker and the bottom rocker said outlaws they only had one they started the chapter in chicago then they grew into milwaukee and grew you know how big they are now changed it to outlaws and then the bottom rocker for the state so that was their hometown that was where they were dominant at and you know the dominant uh one percenters there who were the who were the premier outlaw gangs at the time so the outlaws the hell's henchmen another club called the dc eagles um we had we had there was a black club called the hell's lovers um uh there was a club called the wheelman uh the hombres which they got absorbed by the outlaws later once we once we made our play and became at hell's angels that kind of threw the city up for grabs there and the outlaws went to these other clubs and said hey you're gonna make an alliance here you're with us or you're against us you know so what i got what i'm asking is you where i'm going with this is did you did you look at any of the other clubs to see cultural differences what they stand for versus like these guys stand for what the there has to be some kind of difference correct um i would think so inside their structure i would imagine but i just happened to meet them guys right and they were part of the henchmen so that was the only bike crew that i got to know as far as you know um intimately right i didn't i get to know the outlaws until later in life where i you know seen their structure i knew they were there so there's no like shopping around you're not gonna go to this club and that club no i'm just seeing which one i like better no no not at all because if they knew you know i was running around with the henchmen and being seen over there and now all of a sudden i'm by them i think you're a spy yeah they probably thought i was doing something you know that i shouldn't have been so it's kind of like you know the neighborhood and who you met like i said if i was in tennessee i would have probably met them outlaws and you know join that because i liked what that was part of you know gotcha gotcha all right so we so you so you get patched in do a two or three day bender in a what a year or two you become sergeant at arms about a year later sergeant of arms now i'm an officer for the club right what do you think got you that position um so that's the enforcer that's the enforcer yeah yeah i think you know my the size i was and you know could somewhat fight and you know I wasn't uh Chuck Liddell at the time or anything like that but I can throw my hands right and uh and just being around constantly all the time and them guys seeing me in action from the prospecting days and you know once I got my patch you know we were still fighting with the with the D.

1:09:32Seagulls back in the day um and and and you know they made me the sergeant of arms so there was two of us at the time there was a sergeant of arms that they had and i just joined in the ranks with him with all them guys there was two of us that were the sergeant of arms let's go back a little bit let me hear about your first the first time you got into any sort of a fight with these guys well just describe the scene what you felt um so the fellas got jumped i wasn't part of that one when when about four or five guys got jumped by about 15 guys. And then they came back to the clubhouse and then, you know, we had a meeting the next day, you know, going over everything that happened.

1:10:18We put a crew together a few days later and we went out looking for these guys from different, you know, bar to bar to bar. And we got a phone call from a friend of ours that was in a bar and said, hey, there's three of these guys in here. They're hanging out in the corner, laughing and joking, partying it up. and then we said okay that's where we're going and that's when the fellows showed me about cutting the phone lines in the back coming through the front door and back door keeping it covered we're going to do this job you know this guy's going to watch the door you're coming in with us you got the sap gloves on and the ball peen hammer we're going to beat these guys knock their teeth out of their mouth here right and that's what it's going to be like we're getting them and i said okay cool so you said okay cool i'm in you didn't grow up beating the out of people you got in a couple fights in school and now you're cutting phone lines and beating the out of people with a ball pain hammer and gloves with bb's yeah right shot right jumped right into it right into no hesitation no hesitation i wanted to be i wanted to you know they got our brothers right and i felt that i always used to say we feel that when one guy gets it it's all of us that gets it right and they got our brother so we're out adrenaline up you know i'm on the natch i'm not partying doing anything like that so i'm completely just full of testosterone right and um and then here we get the call they're at this bar so we knew they were there so driving over on the way into the to the bar we were in a van all of us in a van so everybody kind of knew what everybody knew what they were doing this guy's gonna watch this door nobody leaves nobody comes in.

1:11:59There's no cell phones back in the day. Where there were, they were them brick phones, remember? So nobody was taking any camera shots, cutting the phone lines. Nobody was going to press charges because the biker clubs couldn't do that. So as long as you weren't caught on the scene, you were never going to get caught because they couldn't say nothing when the police came. The bar owners and patrons sure weren't going to say anything. They were like, oh, we don't know who did it. So it was like free reign. And that was the first time that I got to feel that. And I was in first with some of the guys.

1:12:30It was me and three of the other guys, and we rolled in the bar. And by the time these guys turned around, we already had them. They were in a corner. And the bar went like this, and they were up against the wall in a corner, so they couldn't get out of the corner. And we were just banging them in that corner. And then to when we were leaving, when they were like, all right, let's go, let's go, everybody out. I was newly in the club, and uh to look back and see that and then getting back in the vehicle and we were all like you know just that adrenaline rush and everything and felt that and that just uh it took me how bad do you them up i mean these guys going to the hospital broken leg they going home and their wife's putting a thing of ice on their face or like how up yeah this incident here they called the amd ambulance had to come and take them broken legs teeth out you know the ball peeing hammers we used to say like we're not going to hit them in the head because we're not trying to kill them right um but in the mouth teeth coming out i watched many times teeth being spit out on the floor why don't you want to kill them um when that particular incidence with this club we weren't we weren't on that let we weren't there with them this was just the the fighting the getting each other like that, mangling each other up.

1:13:50It never came to the shooting, the bombings, which we encountered later as we'll get into. So is this pretty common? I know it's common. I guess what I'm saying is use of deadly force maybe isn't a thing in motorcycle gangs quite yet? Well, not with us. Yeah, not with us in the D. Seagulls. It wasn't to that level yet. There was no nobody got shot nobody nobody means yet it was just all hand-to-hand stuff gotcha you know and uh but we took it to a level with them we were out all the time we call them the hunts all right let's go out and uh hunt around and see who's who you know see who's out and stuff like that so um and i got into that i mean i remember just being in strip clubs with girls all around us and laughing and joking and our pager would go off right the pager days a pager would go off and I'd look at it and I'd get on the phone and the burner phone and be like, what's up?

1:14:47Hey, there's three of them here. Girls, we're out. See you. And we'd get in the, we'd get in whatever we were. You know, if we were on our bikes, we'd take the bikes home or to the spot we were at. We never, we never tried to roll in. Like it's hard to roll in. The bikes are coming. Everybody hears a bike coming. Now they're all, you're beating the drum on the way in. When we were doing the hunts, we were all in just flannel t-shirts and baseball hats and not trying to show everybody who we were. they knew who we were as we came in the bar people knew who we were the other club knew who we were so we we uh me and the the the crew that used to go out and do the hunts all the time we all got addicted to that to where we were being like we could have had the best looking girls all around us doing whatever they wanted for us and we were kicking them to the curb we got to go addiction to adrenaline yeah and just just getting into that that that fighting and that so you fiend for that I fiend for it.

1:15:41That's why I say now I don't dip my toe in any of that. It's hard for me to, when I am telling the stories, to go back because obviously where I'm at in life and what we're doing and by the grace of God and how he changed my life so much, we do talk about this old stuff a lot, right? And here we are with you doing it. And sometimes it's hard because I get that dopamine back in my mind, you know, and it reminds me of them old days and how I felt back then. And as that young youngster running in and, you know, with that violence and the power and everything we had. And, you know, by the time I'm in the club a year or two, everybody knew me on the streets from the outlaws to all the other clubs, they all knew road, you know, I was that young jacked up dude a lot of a lot of the bike clubs weren't bodybuilding they weren't big like there was some big farm fed dudes of course and you know some some crazy tough dudes you know that i wouldn't have wanted to fight but you know i had that aura about me right and uh you know so i was i was very well known now in in this in the city of chicago of what i was doing

1:16:55did you ever get your ass kicked yeah yeah let's talk about the first time that happened yeah so we were um we were in this bar and um a couple of the guys uh from this other club came in we were outnumbered and we ended up taking it outside we ended up you know started it at the doorway we seen them coming in we tried to jump on them as much as we can and we ended up taking it outside and a couple broke ribs. I think the one guy had an axe handle, swung an axe handle or baseball bat, a couple broke ribs. And it was one incident where I was in a bar and I got knocked to the ground and they outnumbered us in the bar.

1:17:35And I remember holding onto the bar stool. I had my head, Sean, my body was laid out. I was on the ground. I was laying on my chest and I had the bar stool over my head and I was holding onto it like that. so they just couldn't get me in the face right i'm pretty fucking smart all the bars still right and they were nailing me in the ribs with steel toe boots and you know so i've been on the receiving end of of some ass kickings like that you know but then as i got a little older and we got into what we ended up getting into i used to say to the fellows all the time i'm not getting hit in the face with a ball peen hammer and axe handle so if the team comes in if the other team comes in the door and we see him running in like that i'm pulling out that's that's the cards we dealt i'm not you know and later that happened of course you know with the outlaw work got so crazy that there was no more of this i mean we'll talk about that that got into a whole nother realm of violence where nobody was looking to fight anymore you know but back in the back to back it up in that days you know i i i felt the ass kicking you know so i i knew both sides of it but it didn't detour me i was like this as as the sergeant of arms for the henchmen you know it's interesting i mean you talk to a lot of the military guys the soft guys any anybody that's been to war you develop this addiction to it yeah the action to the adrenaline dumps to everything no matter what happens yeah yeah just want more more right i think one more up yeah you're gonna retire soon?

1:19:12Nah, just one more deployment. You got 25 fucking deployments. But, yeah. Can you describe daily, like, what is a daily routine at the club once you're a member? So once I became a member and I got to see different things and I got to see more of the underworld and stuff, going to work became a little bit of a hindrance now because now I'm a member. And now I'm really out on the scene. No days off. I'm out every night running around on my motorcycle, getting up, going to work at 6.37 in the morning, kind of getting taxing on me now, right? And I'm starting to think like, this is going to be a little bit of a burden here, but I need money, right?

1:19:57You need money. You got to pay your dues. You got to be, you're going on runs. That costs money, right? So one of the fellows showed me the cocaine game. And I remember telling him, I don't know anybody that does this stuff. Everybody I know is from the gyms and their meatheads and stuff like that they're taking steroids and he goes you'd be surprised how many people you know that you know do this do the cocaine stuff you know so once i started selling and i wasn't doing it in the bars because we didn't we didn't have that luxury i wasn't you know we were in the bars for our mission but i i ended up knowing some people where i can you know sell a quarter ounce an ounce a couple ounces a week and stuff like that once i started making the money that I was making pouring concrete, that's when I went and had a sit down with my boss who was like, I'm dear friends with him today.

1:20:43And I told him, Meryl, I said, I'm, I'm going to give you four weeks. I'm going to give you a month notice. I'm calling it a day. And he goes, what do you mean you're calling it a day? Where are you going to work? You know, who's stealing you from me? I said, I'm not going to work. He goes, what do you mean? I go, I'm going to create a drug empire. And he goes, what? And I said, I'm getting into the drug game, man, I can't do this no more in the club. You know, I'm in the club and it's just taking a lot of my time. And, and I don't, I, I don't have the luxury of giving up the hours to work. So I'm getting into this trade.

1:21:12So once I was making that money, you know, a thousand bucks a week, 1500 bucks a week, I wasn't Al Capone looking to be a millionaire. I just needed an income to facilitate the way I needed to live life. And that's how that started with me with the drugs. And that led into bigger things with the kilos. And, you know, now I was really making some money, but it wasn't never about the money to me, Sean. It's like today. It's like I look back and I say all the time, God always had his hand on me, even though I didn't know it. And you know how the Bible says you can't serve God in money, because you become a slave to one, right?

1:21:47You know so many people that I know and you know are just addicted to money, right? Making money becomes their idol. That wasn't it for me. I just needed to make enough money to facilitate the way I lived. A few different spots I lived. I had multiple girlfriends now as I was, you know, in the club, different motorcycles. You know, now I graduated from the Irox to the Corvettes. Now I had every year that I had the vet of that year, you know, so 91, I had a 91 vet, 92. And making enough money to go live that one percenter lifestyle, right? I didn't go above and beyond. There was many times that I passed on some deals because I didn't want to be involved in it.

1:22:27I didn't have the time to do it, you know, and I could have made a lot more money. But like I said, I just wanted to do that, just enough to facilitate it, you know. So I ended up, you know, quitting the concrete and just running that, which made me being able to be out on the street much, much more as, you know, as we were still henchmen. and so that was you know 89 90 91 now 92 came and uh we one of the guys that was in the henchman did some time in the federal prison with the hell's angel out of minnesota and when they came home they remained friends and that's how we got to meet the hell's angels because of them two guys relationships were they a lot bigger than you guys at the time or were you bigger than them yeah yeah they were a lot bigger than us worldwide you know we said we had the three chapters they had chapters all over the world you know out of the country in the country their minnesota chapter so they had minnesota and then they had nothing through the midwest where we were and then the angels had a chapter in ohio and then south carolina so that whole midwest gap that was right there was all the outlaws that was all their their territory the angels had never been into the midwest until us gotcha yeah so um so now comes to where you know we're talking to these guys and going and meeting them going on some runs that they were on you know some bike events and stuff and getting to know this this minnesota chapter and and their guys and our guys and stuff were intermingling and talking and then uh one day they sat down and they said hey what would you guys think about uh rolling the hell's henchmen into the hell's angels and we were like yeah it sounds pretty cool i mean you know the hell's angels the number one yeah just like that you're like yeah yeah it we like that there's no i mean i would think that would be a somewhat offensive like i mean maybe not they're a global organization you've got three chapters but i would I would think there would be some club pride that's like, why the fuck would we want to do that?

1:24:41Yeah, well, there was with some of the members. Not everybody went. We gave everybody a chance. We took it to a vote. Two-thirds and a majority wins, right? But we all, you know, the guys that we were talking to, the Angels, we were the younger guys, and we were like, yeah, that's pretty cool. You know, the Hell's Angels, the number one, you know, the biggest club right back then. They were the biggest club back then? Yeah, most chapters, most guys. biggest club you know and the outlaws were right there with them they just you know the angels didn't have nothing in the midwest you know they were you know and just as back in the day the outlaws didn't have anything on the west coast that was angel territory you know from minnesota west was all the angels the outlaws had milwaukee and all through the midwest and stuff in indiana and north carolina and stuff like that so um as we were talking to them and getting to know them a little more and they said you know what would you guys think we all sat down and some of them came to our clubhouse and presented it to us at a meeting and we took it to a vote and uh the majority said yes and the guys that didn't want to anymore they just hung it up and they just they just exited from the henchmen because once we you know we had a prospect for the hell's angels they just didn't give us the patch we prospected with our colors on our hell's henchman patch on you had to re-prospect we had to re-prospect does that mean you're an fng all over again yeah they treat you the same way or they well a little different yeah a little bit different they were you know they knew what we were getting ready to go through because they knew us becoming hell's henchmen or hell's angels rolling from the henchmen in the midwest they knew what was coming they knew that the outlaws weren't going to just sit back and go come on in that's they've been mortal enemies since the early 70s fighting constantly on different coasts what year is this this is 92 oh god 1992 so 89 99 i'm now in the club for three years sergeant of arms for the henchmen courting you know with the angels and stuff talking to them and they knew what was going to happen we've talked about it they said listen you guys are you know if you guys make it in with us and you become hell's angels you know them boys ain't just gonna roll over and say welcome to the to the city there it's gonna be a fight tooth and nail because we're coming right in to the heart of where they started and we were like we get it we get it we didn't get it but we thought we got it and we were like okay we want to do it and we did it and um so we had a we prospected for them once once we made it official and they made it official then we started our prospecting period for them.

1:27:23Wearing our own jackets, you know, our Hell's Henchman colors. But now we're really traveling. How do you prospect? I mean, they don't even have a club where you guys are at. So what do they send some supervisors down or something? That too. But we travel to them. So you move cities. Yeah, I was constantly back and forth to Minnesota, but then having to be home because we had to take care of the backyard. I was going to New York all the time. I was going to California constantly to meet the members and the leadership out there making their parties, their anniversary parties. We spent a busy year with our guys, you know, all of us, you know, hey, you got, we hit this last party.

1:28:04You three go hit this party. You go here. We're going here. They're calling us over here. So we prospected like that. They didn't dog us down. They weren't telling us, hey, go get us a pack of cigarettes from the 7-Eleven and bring it to Minnesota. they weren't doing stuff like that okay so it's it's like a a respect thing because we were like changing fucking teams in the mlb or changing services and you know from yeah yeah navy to the marine corps or something like that a lot of respect there and they knew they knew that what we had to take care of our backyard and you know we all kind of knew that it was going to come to some fighting with them with the outlaws you know so we would we would get back home nobody would say hey we need you out here for two months we'd go hit a party go hit a run or something and get right back to our home ground in chicago you know what what were you seeing so you had you had three years as a henchman so any buyer's remorse any immediate like oh fuck maybe we shouldn't have done this no they don't they don't run it like we do our shit's better nothing no you liked it we We liked it.

1:29:09Yeah, we liked what we seen. Different guys meeting different guys, the brotherhood that they had, the way they were running their individual charters and stuff like that. We were all in for that. The guys that said yes, and we said we're all in for it. Like I said, the guys that didn't want, they left. So now, just going back to my Chicago chapter, from them 28 or 30 guys that we had, when we made it into the Hells Angels, when they gave us that patch, 12 or 13 months later, there was 13 of us. That's it? Yep. 13 of us in Chicago. 8 to 10 in Rockford. Another 8 to 10 in Indiana. Shit, that was the three chapters that made it.

1:29:56because a lot of guys said we don't want to do this what was the discussion like when i mean when you guys had that uh when the two clubs came together to discuss it and then it's just the henchmen what kind of i mean what are the pros and cons you guys are going over as just the henchman team yeah should we do this or should yeah yeah we we we were talking about you know what the outlaws were gonna how they were gonna feel and what we were doing and but you know we said this what we want to do and we're not going to let anybody stop us from doing it we we met these guys we liked them we had a great relationship with the minnesota guys they were kind of our so to say sponsors right even though we were prospecting for the club in a hole but they were the closest ones to us so they were kind of our overseers our sponsors we had a great relationship with them what what did you guys like so much so what is what i'm asking was do you just like the bigger club the bigger network yeah the the being a part of the hell's angels the premier motorcycle gang in the fucking world yes or is there other incentives yeah no i mean it was structured the same we you know we structured the same the same kind of mentality but now we're part of the biggest motorcycle club in the world okay and you know like i remember sitting with one of the angels and uh he's like man we're giving you guys the world you guys are giving us the midwest and you know i remember always remembered him saying that you know we're going to be a part of this and stuff and so we had to do our time and meet everybody and get to see everybody because you know they voted on us just like the same way you know are these guys ready we're going to bring them up for a vote you know and they brought us up for a vote and now as we're still henchmen and And now that the word is out that we're prospecting for the Hells Angels, the outlaws got hold of us because they knew some of the henchmen.

1:31:54The henchmen knew them. We interacted with them on the streets and stuff like that. And we sat down at a meeting with them in a restaurant. I think there was four, five, six of our guys, four, five, six of us. And they said, hey, we heard a rumor. Heard a rumor you guys are going Hells Angel. and I wasn't the president, I was Sergeant Arms, so our president at the time said, it's not a rumor, we're prospecting for the Hell's Angels. And they got up and pushed their seats out and they said, see you when we see us. And they walked out of that restaurant and I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember looking in one of their guy's eyes.

1:32:33He was from Janesville, Wisconsin. And a big dude, a big tall, big dude, man. And he's the one who said it, we'll see you when we see us. and they walked out and we were sitting there and I was like, I'm thinking, man, we better tie our shoes up. This is going to get real here. You know, they're, they're pissed off. They were so mad. They didn't, there wasn't, they didn't jump us. They didn't scream at us. They didn't swear at us. They just basically told us exactly what was going on. I remember us getting back and we're like, okay, you know, and, uh, and oh boy, you know, we, we thought we were ready for what was gonna come but uh we did not know what was gonna come yeah but here we are what the fuck were you guys doing a three chapter motorcycle gang going after the biggest the biggest gang in the midwest yeah yeah i know bro i look back at it now and i'm like you know i mean i probably wouldn't have changed it you know that young version of me if the old version i was saying would have said with the young version of the young version would have kicked me out of the room like beat it this is what we're doing we made that decision we said here we are and here's what we're doing so you know we kind of let them um start the ball rolling you know we didn't go we knew what was happening but we didn't go out looking for them even though the angels and the outlaws were had that ongoing feud from i think 1970 on and and they were tit for tatting each other and murders and different things in different states, you know, we didn't jump right into it and say, oh, let's go out looking for these guys tomorrow now.

1:34:13We just continued to be prospects and learn the Hells Angel way and meeting everybody. And, you know, we had to go through the formality of it all. Right. And as we were a prospect in the, that's when they came in and they killed one of our president, the president that was the president of Rockford, Illinois, by the name of Monty Mathias, been a henchman for many, many, many, many years. Had a bike shop, drag racer, you know, just a blue-collar dude, man, and a good guy. I was really close with Monty as a young kid, you know, as that youngster. He helped take me under his wing and showed me that brotherhood way and everything like that.

1:34:55He was the first one that got murdered. You know, he had a bike shop, so he had to be there, you know, where a lot of us, you know, that didn't work. We were never pinned down the one place. And they sent one of their guys in there and brutally killed him in the bike shop. How'd they kill him? They shot him at first. He was behind the counter. One of the guys went in, and there were some guys outside, and he came back out, and he goes, he's in there. So he went in, and he bought some spark plugs. They all bought some spark plugs. And when he came out, and he was like, he's in there alone, you know, and they're like if you can get them get them you know this is all court documented and stuff because they got arrested and he went back in and monty had sensed something was wrong you know he sent something and he was a big dude money was a big workout guy and when he came in and said oh he's out these spark plugs ain't gonna work they're not gonna fit right he pulled out a gun real quick and he shot monty in the shoulder and in the chest area with a 45 caliber gun kind of spun him around and when he came on the other side of the counter, Monty grabbed him up off his feet, and the fight started.

1:36:07Monty was able to turn the gun around on him, but as he was firing Sean, it was just going past him. He couldn't get it up to his, shoot him in the body or the face. Just firing it past him. He unloaded the clip. He doesn't have a gun. There was a screwdriver on the top of Monty's counter. This outlaw grabbed it and stabbed Monty all through the neck and everything. Shit. Bleeding out. thinking he killed them. So as he's going to go run out the back door, Monty's shop had them overhead doors, but he had pins in them and he couldn't open up the door. He didn't know where the pins were. So he had to come running back through.

1:36:44And when the coroners got there, by the time everybody got there, Monty was drained out of blood. So as he was running back through, Monty trips him again. He falls into Monty's blood, which is all over the tile floor. and he grabs another he grabs that screwdriver again and finishes the job off you know holy shit and uh you you know you're gonna uh uh speak with chris bayless uh tomorrow you know and um you're gonna hear a lot more of the story from his and you know the retired atf agent but uh drained him out of blood there got out got back in the car with the fellows you know of course they got out of the dodge and everything they didn't get caught later until they took a rico indictment and you know some some of the guys flipped and put the story together right but uh so monty was the first one so i remember getting that call getting a page 9-1-1 stopping at a pay phone and and the fellow's telling me monty just money they just found monty murdered at his shop so we all jumped in the vehicles got up to rockford the place was you know we couldn't get near the place with all the police presence and everything and but we got to hear how it happened you know so that was the first act of violence and it was what an act right i mean they went right to the heart of it right to monny who was you know the known leader you know monny was the one that was pushing with the rest of us to become angels and um you know up there in rockford and they had milwaukee and the state line guys for the outlaws they surrounded them right there you know they had them you know they knew his play and that was the first one they got so now here we are like and i'm remembering what that guy said like see you when we see you and i'm like man that that went from escalated from this because there was a few fights before just a few you know little uh bar fights with us in the outlaws now as we're still henchmen but that was pretty quick we didn't even have our hell's angel patch so monny was the first hell's angel made he was the first one he got buried with his tells angel colors while we were still prospects Shit.

1:38:54Yeah. So the Sixth Year of War begins, huh? So it begins, yeah. Yeah. Let's take a quick break. How much are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness worth to you? That's the question America's founders had to answer. For more than 150 years, the colonies governed themselves, until Britain stepped in and said they had no right to self-rule. So ordinary people were forced into extraordinary choices, risking their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to fight for independence. Against all odds, they won and built one of the most stable and lasting republics in history. Revolutionary America from Hillsdale College and narrated by Tom Selleck brings the founding of our nation to life through the voices of those who lived it, along with insights from leading scholars.

1:39:47There's a moment in the trailer where they talk about signing what many believed at the time were their own death warrants, and that really puts it into perspective. These guys knew exactly what was at stake. At a time when history is often distorted, this is your chance to see the story as it truly happened. And ask yourself, what would you risk for freedom? It's only in theaters May 31st through June 2nd. Go to hillsdale.edu slash revolution to get your tickets now and find a theater near you. You don't want to miss this on the big screen. That's hillsdale.edu slash revolution.

1:40:29Welcome to Hollywood versus reality. Did I do it? Right?

1:40:37What does he do in the movies? Please tell me if I'm doing this wrong, because I don't watch any of this. Little flick like that, right? Seems pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Gotta silence it.

1:40:55In another lifetime, I did gun reviews for a living. Proprietary magazines, supposedly the best engineering in the world. When that breaks, you're. And now we're bringing him back.

1:41:13It does look pretty cool. I gotta admit that. All right, Mel, we're back from the break. You just got patched over to the Hells Angels. Yes. And the war has begun, buddy. Monty Matthias being the first of the casualties right there. It had to be 1990. And you weren't patched yet. We weren't patched. We were not patched yet. We were still prospects as Monty happened. He was the first one, as I said, he was the first one to receive his Hells Angel patch right in that casket. And, you know, I remember that like it was yesterday because Monty had real long salt and pepper hair, big dude, just a guy who showed me a lot in life.

1:42:06And when we were getting ready to close the casket, we put the patch over him. We'd take his vest and put it over him with the Hells Angel part up and shut the casket. And it was me and a few guys up there. and uh you know his daughter his wife was there's this is the little girl and she uh leaned over her dad's casket and she was rubbing his hair crying tears in her eyes tears in our eyes i'm just thinking to myself man we did this right we just was a heavy feeling on me sean i was just you know our actions did this but when that casket closed and we started walking away with the fellows there was hundreds of hell's angels there from around the country hundreds and um i remember telling my guys like let's give them one by the end of the week let's change the mood from glad to sadness because that's all we knew we didn't know what to do you know when in rome and there was no more of this it just came right to the to the how do you take it any farther than that than the murder you know you know what did the hell's angels say when you guys reported that to him i mean you know we of course they a lot of respect you know for what we were doing and what we stood up to decided to do i mean i don't think there was too many guys in the club around the world you know around the united states at least that that didn't know we were in the middle of the hornet's nest you know like I said we didn't know what was gonna happen but I knew it wasn't gonna be a peaceful thing we just didn't know how far it was gonna escalate you know and then we became a group of guys that had to go you know retaliate and and for our brother and we couldn't do it by this no more that was out the door to going in on the bars with him was just no more so now we had a you know to pay it back the way you know the way they were doing it to us shooting of one of their guys their presidents got shot off his motorcycle on the highway um one of um by by a few of our guys got him on the highway which we just later came out in the rico indictment that i got rico for that was one of my predicate acts for even though i wasn't there but i i knew what was happening and uh i cleaned the the mess up with the truck i had the truck You know, my guy's truck repainted and brought it to a buddy of mine's body shop and changed the color on that truck today, have it out in the street in the morning.

1:44:43So I obviously they knew I knew about the crimes because, you know, when the when the RICO case was getting put against us, we had some members that flipped for the government and told them the stories. Right. So my RICO case was just it was a was a RICO conspiracy. I never got caught in any of the acts. I never got caught with any of the drug transactions. It was all the people coming in before me saying, this is what I did with Mel. This is what he was involved in. Less time to get out of jail free card. Not get out of it, but less time for them guys that were cooperating witnesses against stuff that was going on in the RICO.

1:45:26How long after this did you patch over?

1:45:31We, 1994, December 2nd, I believe is the date, 1994, when the Hell's Henchmen became Hell's Angels. What was that like? What was that ceremony? Yeah, that was an amazing feeling, right? I mean, even though we lost Monty and we did our patch ceremony at the Rockford Clubhouse, the Hell's Angels came in with our patches and stuff. We had people there that were sewing, sewing machines and everything like that. And we took them Hell's henchman vests off and I had a new vest and everything and sewed the Hell's Angel patches on our stuff. And we were officially Hell's Angels December 2nd, 1994. What'd they say to you?

1:46:16Congratulations, you guys made it. And, you know, heavy feeling because we just lost Monty. We were in his home, his clubhouse there. We did it there like that. But for the rest of us, it was, you know, we made it. We're here. Here we are. We made it in the club now. Now we're officially Hells Angels. And, you know, now, you know, knowing that this stuff is not going to change, they're like, oh, the patch changed. Let's leave these guys alone. It was worse, right? Because now we're here. Now we got the patch flying down the street that never has been seen in Illinois before. Now the death heads there with the rockers.

1:46:53and here we are you know the three chapters you know um so then you know the violence kept you know coming we ran into a couple of them off in a bar we didn't know they were in there we happened to pull up they were in there and you know we we got the jump on them ball peen hammers beat them beat them a couple of them up with axe handles and we had a you know one in room we had to you know do that and we always used to say to each other we're not trying to go to prison we knew it was there. I used to tell the prospects coming in, not that we had a lot coming in at them days, you know, nobody was wanting to step into that scene, not a lot of people.

1:47:30But I used to say, if you're afraid to go to the penitentiary or afraid to be a tombstone on somebody's arms, probably is not the crew for you. I used to tell the guys all the time, save me a good spot on your chest for, you know, when I go. And they'd say, man, don't say that, Mel. And I'd say, well, how am I? I'm the poster child here. Because now I became the president shortly after we patched into the Hell's Angels. That quick? Yeah. So the president that was the president of the henchmen, I was still the Sergeant of Arms for the angels now. Now I'm the Sergeant of Arms for the angels. And that president that was the former president of the henchmen, you know, he had 20 something years in the club already.

1:48:08And he was the president for like 15 years of, you know, before that. And I was bouncing all around, traveling around. I got real close to some New York guys. Who are you traveling around for? For meetings and stuff. Okay. Yeah, for meetings and, you know, if they have officer meetings, you know, I was going as one of the officers, you know, taking the president to the henchman, you know, me and him going together. I was a sergeant of arms. I was a security. Meeting all the different angels from around, you know. I got tight with a former Hell's Angel by the name of Chuck Zito from New York. He ran the New York crew.

1:48:47I was going out to the West Coast all the time, you know, got to meet, got to, you know, Sonny Barger and George Christie and that whole crew that ran that West, you know, the California crew. How were they? The West Coast. They were always good to me. I was that young dude, man, and they, they seen what we were doing and what we were willing to do for that club so they always treated me very respectfully and you know i looked up to them guys because they were in the club for many years and uh they had a legacy with the hell's angel so i you know i just tried to sit back and learn and watch how these guys did certain things i mean not everything every charter is a different uh you know spot but uh you know i interviewed george christie i did hear that yes i did hear that i gave him one of those books we were just talking about oh you did good i hope he read it yeah not sure where george is at with his faith you know i think he's close yeah i i i talked to george here and there from time to time still you know and throw him a text and stuff like that you know i seen him uh three four years back when i did uh john bernthal's podcast because john uh is up in ohi and it's you know connected to ventura they're right next door so john got to know george from some gyms so they surprised me with george coming on to uh to see me at the podcast yeah he asked him i said at the end of the interview i said where do you think you're going heaven or hell wow he said he didn't know so i gave him one of those books and told him he doesn't have much time left he better dig into that planting the seed sean that's what we're supposed to do christ said to the disciples i always say this, the last thing he said before his feet left this earth where he walked and touched, as you know, one of the last things he said to them disciples were, go and make disciples in all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

1:50:47It was a command for all of us believers to do. You know, it's like the word says, you don't put a lamp on a light stand and cover it with a towel you let that light shine and that's what we're to do to everybody that's around us we're not ashamed of our faith we will stand for our faith if it comes to be being beheaded in our faith because that's what the you know it says in the end times that's you're gonna either take the marker of the beast or you're gonna stand strong we're standing strong because we know where we're going when we're done it's already one we know we're going to you know be in that eternal paradise with this body.

1:51:24A lot of my friends ask me, oh, you know, because, you know, they're trying to, you know, grab onto the concept of everything. So we're going to have these bodies. I go, yeah, you're going to be all tattooed up. I go, I don't know that knucklehead. You know what I mean? I don't know if I'm going to be 300 pounds, 150 pounds. We know we're going to have bodies like when Christ walked the earth with all the disciples. We're going to have these bodies again, glorified, no heart disease, no pec tears, know all this stuff like that. So I tell everybody, we know where we're going. And as we're taking this journey, it would be a disservice for guys like us that know the Lord to not shine it through, which you do.

1:52:02I mean, a lot of people tell me, a lot of people are attracted to you and your podcast because you're a believer. Some people don't know the military stuff with you. They didn't know your past, but they go, man, oh, that's Sean Ryan, man. He's a believer. You see the people he's got on his show that's cool to hear making an impact bro that is really cool to hear you know back to hell's angels okay so um so now you're getting ready so you were just going into you're gonna be president the president so now i'm the sergeant of arms i come to a meeting i'm a few minutes late i called up hey boys i got stuck by a train or whatever i'm gonna be a few minutes late i roll into the meeting they're all sitting there and the president says hey you're not the sergeant of arms anymore and i said what yeah we took it to a vote i said how could you take it to a vote without me here they did another trick on me so how could you take it to a vote without me here because it's every year you have a vote for officers in an election and And he says, we want you to be the president.

1:53:08And I said, what? And Jerry says, you've been on the right side of me for so long, you know what's happening. I'm a little older now. You travel all over, all these guys know you. And it's the perfect fit. And I was like, wow, okay. I'm honored and ripped the Sergeant of Arm tag off. And so the president tag on me and oh boy, that was - How old were you? 20 let's see 24 24 years old 24 years old 24 with that new title and the first murder was done you know and the back and forth was already going on and uh knowing that I had a real big responsibility now right John not only to keep to protect the crew and the guys and keep us all safe but to move forward and to not get eliminated there as you could see you know gets deeper and we'll go into it but the outlaws were not playing any games and they had a crew oh boy they had a crew we weren't dealing with some uh it was a pushover by by no means man they had a legit crew that was willing to take care of business at the drop of a hat right so then maybe a handful of months one of my guys from my own charter by the name of jack castle we call him four by he got murdered he was sitting out in front of his uh work he drove a truck big dump truck he was sitting out in front of his work reading the paper drinking a coffee in a car came by and stopped and unloaded a fully automatic like ak i believe it was right into his whole head.

1:54:55Shit. His jawbone was somewhere laying on the street. Just, you know, brutal right there. So I got that call. We got that call. Went over to, you know, try to get by the scene and stuff. You know, the cops were out there and stuff. So that was now, Monty's killed from Rockford, but now it's in my back. It's home for me. Just lost four of I. So, you know, trying to figure all that out and to keep our guys safe and to move forward. We couldn't just hide in a clubhouse. We had to continue to hit the streets, do what we do, and being gravely outnumbered. I mean, we were outnumbered five to one at least.

1:55:35I said, there was 13 of us, 8 to 10 in Rockford, 8 to 10 in South Bend. Them were two hours from us. Them guys could put 100 guys together in 20 minutes. So they were hitting all the big bike functions where we couldn't go to because we couldn't go with 20 guys, 30 guys and there's a hundred of them it's been a been a slaughter right there right so we had to go and do the old art of war and do some things you know and through the alleys as i say we had to get you know do some the underhand stuff the shooting on the highway the the the shooting in indiana and we've just had to we had to do like that it wasn't too much that we can you know we'd put some crews together other hells angels would come in from out of town and we'd have you know 60 70 guys and we just go now we'd go hit some swap meets and pound the street like that but when when everybody went back home it was just us it was just us 13 guys trying to make sure there wasn't another money and there wasn't another four by and you guys are taking action against them we're trying to take some action against them on the sneak right so we couldn't you know we were going out to bars with our crew i was out all the time we were out constantly in the streets, hitting the bars, hitting this and that.

1:56:47Maybe we'd run into him, maybe we wouldn't. If we ran into him in the bars, it had to be this because nobody was doing it right in public in the open, right? We used to say if that opportunity came up and you're going to shoot one to kill one, you're not going to do it with 300 people watching. You're going to do that on the highway or in a backyard or somewhere where you can possibly get away with it, right? Right. So all that all that was going on is I'm the president and, you know, and now I'm the target for these guys. Right. Because I'm all over the place. I'm training in the gyms. I'm at every strip club.

1:57:22I didn't join the club at that young age. And now to be 24 years old, to be sitting in the clubhouse, partying and watching TV in the clubhouse. I needed to be out. I needed the women. I needed the fix. I was I was an addict for all that. the girls and i needed that whole lifestyle so we me and my crew were constantly out on the streets and then the bombings came before we get to the bombings what is the outlaws goal is it to kill every single one of you is to make it to where there was no hell that we couldn't be there was no hell's angels in the in the in the midwest anymore that was their goal right off the bat which is what they should have did right they did what they were supposed to do we were the crew coming in turning into hell's angels they had to get us immediately because why are you going to let us grow so what's your goal our goal obviously you can't kill every outlaw right hundreds of them right unless there's our yeah our goal guys 2030 you guys yeah yeah and our goal was to obviously stay safe not be on the other end of that murder but to also establish ourselves that we're here we're not leaving and we are going to be on the streets you know we didn't we didn't we didn't become the hell's angels to sit in the clubhouse like i keep saying we're just that was our goal so it was like we had a we had a it was a balancing act your goal is to survive and grow survive and grow and not initiate violence against the outlaws we you know we were we at first we were trying not to but when they when they brought it to that violent level you know there's there's they're keeping scoring at one percent of the world right and if it just keeps happening on one side and they keep doing stuff to us guess these other clubs are gonna join the forces and say hey we'll we'll join you guys or we'll come over your way you guys are manhandling these angels and they ain't doing a thing couldn't happen we had to be productive in that world you know there was a scorecard going on behind the scenes so how are you going to grow when you're up against hundreds of them yeah there's 30 of you and only 13 immediately available yeah and we weren't growing as far as new members coming in you know i in in the decade i spent in the club i i sponsored one guy.

1:59:49Are you fucking kidding me? One guy, Sean, one. And I grew up with him in my neighborhood. Tough kid. And I knew he was for the cause. I sponsored one guy. I think through that whole time, there was probably only, I don't know, maybe five, six guys that came in total in the Chicago crew. Holy shit. So guys weren't wanting to sign up on our end, especially when they were seeing what was going on everybody wants to be a gangster until it's time to do gangster shit right boy that's the i feel that one you know i feel that one you know because after after the after the war stopped and uh you know i was gone and and and then you know away for the first prison sentence and stuff i came home and there was now a bunch of you know the truce was on and all of a sudden there's five six new guys in the charter and i'm like huh wonderful good to see us where were you You know what I mean?

2:00:45And you can't take that stance, right? But yeah, so we weren't really grown, so our really objective was to keep ourselves safe and to go out and make that name. That one percenter world, I always say this. What do you mean, make that name? That name that we're here, that we're, you know, we're the angels, we're here, we're strong, we're not going anywhere, and we're also going to give it back to you. So how are you going to make that name? You know, back through the violence. I say this, in that one percenter world, and I'm going back in the day, whoever's willing to do the most violence, whether you lose guys to the penitentiary, you lose one to murder, do a couple to murder, whoever's willing to do the most violence is going to be the dominant one.

2:01:33And we had the outlaws that were proven to us that they were willing to do the violence. so we had to give it back to him we couldn't just sit back you know and meanwhile the angel charters from around the united states were looking at us too like did we bet on the right horse here are these guys going to fold are they going to get ran out of town are they not going to be able to handle what they you know what what brought to them i didn't want that on my watch right so i you know i i had to learn that violence in that type of way and like i said there's there's no playbook in that one. I didn't have nothing to read.

2:02:08I just was going by what, you know, what they were doing and saying, okay, let's give them a funeral by the end of the week. Here we are. Hate that we're in this position. I mean, a lot of us weren't raised like that, but, you know, we adapted when we had to and kept that charter moving forward. And, you know, and after the truce, you know, we sat down with them many years later and said, hey, nobody's winning here but the feds and the graveyards, let's put our differences aside and see if we could practice the good neighbor policy. But that happened in 98. So from 94 to 98, that four years was going.

2:02:58Shootings, bombings, murders, just turning it upside down. Janet Reno was the Attorney General of the United States back then. And they put a full court press on me and five of the guys. They called it Operation Lucifer. They hid our houses through the midst of all this. Five of us, big money spent on all this and stuff. And at the end of the day, two years later, I pled guilty to misdemeanor possession of steroids. So it was a flop, right, Sean? And all our guys were like, ah, look at that. Waste of money, waste of time. but i always seen the bigger picture and i said listen we beat them this round it ain't over now they're really mad hence the atf and the full court press later with the rico but uh you know we were all you know everybody was jumping up and down we after all that time and hitting five of our houses and coming up i mean at one of the guy's houses they were scraping a mirror to get some cocaine off it i mean taking specs off the mirror and stuff like that the guns they had in in his house were good.

2:04:03The guns, I wasn't a felon at the time. The guns I had in my house were legal, you know, but I had some steroids in the house because I took steroids, right? So, you know, I pled guilty to misdemeanors. So that was the egg on their face back in the day that, you know, that's all that came out from us. And then the full court press came on. Once, once the, once the, the shootings really didn't do it. The murder of Monty. Yes, they were, you know, we heard, of course, the feds are watching you, but once the first explosive went off when did this first explosive go off um oh that had to be The end in the early 95 I think that was Shawn the first that bombing.

2:04:46How did it happen? They put 100 pounds of C4 in a trunk of a car. Shaped it. You know they knew what they were doing. Shaped it the way they needed to shape it. Drove it up. we were on this busy street in in chicago called grand avenue a busy street a two-way street it was like five or five thirty in the evening by the grace of god nobody got hurt or killed nobody was in our clubhouse they thought there was because there was some cars out in front a couple members from minnesota were in town visiting we had rooms at the clubhouse you know where they could stay, you know, rooms, you know, bedrooms and stuff.

2:05:29And so they thought somebody was there. They were out sightseeing in the city, seeing the different sights of Chicago with some of our guys. So nobody was there. So they drove that up, put it against the door. This is the clubhouse. They parked that car so nobody could get out that front big door that we had. And then a car picked them up. We seen it from the surveillance tapes from across the street. There was an auto parts store across the street. We had a camera over there. And that member, that outlaw got in the car and just made it down the block and that thing went off. So we found out later through their trials and stuff that that member, they drove that car and right at the corner was a gas station.

2:06:11They went into the gas station and pulled this lithium piece of paper out to start that timer. how about that guy driving that thing and drove it you know uh 90 seconds down the street right how about the dude driving that i don't remember his name or i didn't know him but i mean i was like wow that dude had to have yeah you should have prospected him yeah for sure right he was man he drove that car i'd have been like i'm not can we just set the car there i'll pull the pin but I got to. So, um, and that went off on the middle of the week, five, something, six, five, 36 o 'clock in the evening on the busiest street.

2:06:50The crazy part is one of the Chicago cops was going by and he looked and he seen the car up on the sidewalk. And he was like, ah, it's probably just the angels moving, moving some stuff out of their, in and out of their clubhouse. If that guy would have stopped, he would have been killed. That explosion, you know, obviously it went down first, right? I think the hole in the sidewalk was five, six feet deep. Then the concussion came back up, knocked that car completely down the block. They found the VIN number a mile away, hit our front door, blew the front door through the black door, cracked the foundation.

2:07:29It was an old Chicago building. So it had a basement that was under the sidewalk, you know, the concrete, a first floor and a second floor, right? Cracked it all the way through. The concussion bounced off, went across the street. A bus, you could see a bus full of commuter people just went by like 40, 50 seconds before it gets by out of the way. The blast goes across the street and across the street was an old Chicago siding house, aluminum siding house, just blasted the siding off the side of the house. So the Fed said to this day, I don't think it changed. It was the third largest bomb. The first one being Oklahoma City, the second one being the trade towers, but from the bottom, when they blew it from the parking garage.

2:08:16I said this on another podcast and they're like, no, they were thinking I was talking about the planes. It was from when they blew up the trade center from the from the parking garage and then ours the third largest domestic bomb 100 pounds of c4 and nobody got her nobody got hurt or hurt or hurt killed nothing well that was some piss poor planning man they thought we were in there you know fuck in here and now you know knowing how the explosives work and if anybody was in that clubhouse i mean it would have blown out their everything their eardrums or eyes if you did live you'd be miserable right i mean that thing was uh when i i got the call i was at home and i lived about 30 minutes from the clubhouse and my phone started ringing and one of my one friends said hey man i think your clubhouse is on the news turn on the news and i go what channel he goes any of them oh boy and i go what and i turned on the news and i seen grand avenue and there's an explosion that rocked rocked the rocked the city blah blah so my guy started calling me up and i'm like all right let's meet at the gas station you know we're we're in the corner where that guy did that so we meet down there it's all roped off we can't get down there and i'm standing out there with the fellows you know and here comes one of the federal agents and he comes down he goes hey road he goes come here man can we talk to you and i said yeah i brought one of my guys with me and i said what's going on what do you think happened down there i said i don't know we're watched watched it on the news right and i said what happened then an explosion went off at our building and did a a pipe bust?

2:09:42He goes, no. Somebody put in a bomb on it in front of your clubhouse in a car. He goes, who do you think did it? And I said, I don't know. You know, stand in line. Who knows? I don't know who's mad at us, right? And he goes, OK. And I said, can I come down and see the spot? And he said, yeah, come on. We'll walk you down. He goes, you can't go in. It's a crime scene. I said, OK, let's walk down there. We walked down there and looked at the building and seen the door and the whole front of the place blown backwards in. And like I said, they didn't let us in. And I was like, okay, so now Washington flew in.

2:10:17Janet Reno sent the whole team from Washington, and then they seized and took over the place now, you know, for active crime scene. They were, you know, swiping in and, you know, making sure they got everything they needed to get. So we had to do shifts out there because the place was wide open. There was bikes inside there. All of our personal stuff was in there and everything like that. So we were doing shifts, you know, because they wouldn't be in there online. so we had members sitting out in the streets making sure that nobody could just go walk right through the front of the building and i think they had that for a couple weeks sean and then they finally hit us back and said okay we're done here you guys can go in and when we went in it literally looked like the bomb i mean the place was just as you know the upstairs had a big bar area with a band stage and everything like that nothing was left uh the bottles of booze all knocked over that concussion just blasted everything ripped the stage in in half you know the concussion went all the way up so you know it was a mess there and uh so that was uh that was the first one are they sending any communications in in the interim who's that john the outlaws no no messages to you guys no talks what are you and your guys talking about that we don't know this bomb thing right and uh i was talking to my guys and i said guys i mean i don't barely know how to put the pager and the battery in my pager i don't know this stuff this explosive stuff i said but uh you know when in rome now we got to do this so we're trying to figure out how we can do this the same thing back to them trying to figure out demolition demolition right none of us knew it i mean none of us had known it and um meanwhile while we're trying to figure that out bomb number two goes off they put a bomb underneath one of the guy's cars from rockford one of his trucks remote starter he said we all had remote starters after that bomb i had a corvette remote starter looking underneath the car with a with a mirror at all the spots you know i had it easy out of that it was loaded to ground these guys had pickup trucks sky roger had a pickup truck from rockford starts it remote starts it all good gets in the truck puts it in reverse they tied it around the yoke bam do you know that the string goes off blows him up in the truck he lives he lives dies a couple times on the way to the hospital he flat lines they bring him back to life veins pumping blood the back of his legs all gone that thing was right underneath him we get the call now we got to go two hours away to rockford to do a shift with him in the hospital now he's laying up in the hospital fighting for his life we can't leave him there alone 24 hour around the clock because we're thinking they're going to come in and finish him off so that was uh that was uh bomb number two and we were like man they're taking this away from us they're taking the fight away from us now now they're really getting in personal putting these bombs and just you know walking away and i mean how are you and your guys handling this i mean i would imagine you'd be doing some kind of counter surveillance on the way home bouncing and houses, surfing couches, fucking whatever you can to make yourself not time and place predictable.

2:13:39For sure.

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2:14:58and

2:15:08So So

2:15:26But in the meantime, I still needed to be me. I couldn't hide in the house. That's what we were. We weren't doing that. We had to get out. I was still going to the gyms and training, bringing a little crew with me. and you know you're pretty vulnerable when you're benching or doing some working out and stuff and some dudes walk in the gym they all knew where I was I didn't I didn't hide it I was out I had to be out so they know where we were so we were definitely trying to bounce through all that and figure out a way that we can uh you know pay this favor back to them you know with the with the second bombing that they did you know and uh and that's what we did I had found somebody that uh was a former military dude and we knew him very well and uh you know he was in another smaller club and wanted to become a hell's angel and uh i knew the background through some some of our guys in the club and i said okay can you uh build something that's going to do that same thing to their clubhouse and he said yeah and i said okay that's that's your gig get that thing done you know you still got a prospect you still got to do your time with us because we don't want to put you out on front street all of a sudden and we just gave you the patch but uh let's uh let's put a firecracker on their clubhouse I told them you know and that's what we did we we ended up putting a bomb on their clubhouse in Chicago that not 100 pounds of c4 you know he made this one by hand but uh then they got the message back we got them too so then that you know now now they're looking under their cars anyone no no a couple people were in the clubhouse from what I was told blew their front door out their side wall, you know.

2:17:04And I think they had somebody living back there that they took in, you know, had some concussion stuff done, from what I was told, you know, on that end later, and hearing it later in life. And now that woke everybody up on their end now, because now they've seen that we were in the same playing field as them, you know.

2:17:26um yeah it just uh it escalated so fast with that violence sounds like it yeah you know and i used to say all the time i'm like some of us were so deep in the forest we couldn't see the trees you know we just had to keep going and doing you know what they were doing to us we kind of let them set the pace a little bit back in the day you know they beat up a couple of uh people that had our support t-shirts on you know the the the friends and you know that would come and buy a support shirt at the at the parties we never put hell's angels on anything that went out to the public so it would be support your local 81 you know eight being the h and a being the first letter of the alphabet h being the eighth support your local 81 chicago and they started beating up the the citizens that were wearing support shirts you know and uh i never wanted to do that we never wanted to go take any take that to anybody that was just their supporters but went in room so we had to do the same thing starting to grab their guys up letting them feel that they they they took a couple smaller clubs in and they said you're gonna prospect for us and we're gonna do the same thing you guys will will become outlaws and uh we went hit the smaller clubs right away because they were just you know a ma and pa club that were enjoying life riding their motorcycles without of care in the world now they're prospecting for the outlaws they weren't used to that lifestyle that one percenter they weren't living it but the outlaws were growing in numbers because they were taking these these smaller clubs over so we were like well let's welcome them to the lifestyle and we'd go pound on them fast how would you get this information on who they're who they're absorbing?

2:19:17You know, just from all the street. We knew so many people. I would always hear, you know, what they were doing. You guys are working sources? Yeah. Yep. Keeping people on the streets, telling us what they're doing. Hey, they're taking this club over right now. These guys are prospects for them. All right. Where are they hanging? Let's go get them immediately because they're not used to this. The outlaws were used to it all. That was just part of the everyday life like it was ours but when you just take a new crew in and you go no you're part of this now oh by the way you know as you see we're at war with the angels that all sounds good until you and jojo are super tight and now jojo's not there no more and you're like geez so that's the that's the play we took on that we were like let's get these guys and kind of welcome them to that lifestyle and when they're getting beat with ball peeing hammers and shot off their motorcycles and stuff they were like holy cow we didn't this wasn't in the brochure why a ball peen hammer uh you know i learned that trick from the old school angels and it was like it's not a weapon until you used it so you could have that ball peen hammer in your back pocket right you know it was it was not a weapon as a hammer but that was an amazing equalizer right i don't care if three four guys jump you you pull out the ball peen hammer and you're swinging that across their jaw and stuff you know you're uh you're getting the job done so we always had them ball peed hammers the handles fiberglass handles sticking out of our back pockets i used to tuck it into a bandana so it slide right out of my back pocket and you know you can use that at any time and on top of i had two guns in my patch i had a 45 and a nine that were sewn into like that and a knife and stuff just like a 45 and a nine i like the nine back in the day because it held so many in the clip and it was fast and that 45 was was an equalizer right that thing would stop a truck right so one of the old school guys was like listen you got the you got the gun with that you know that can hold 15 i think i remember back in day one in the chamber and the 45 the cannon so i always carried two you know what else did you carry all pain hammer a 45 and a nine nine and then a knife, a sheath and a knife that I could pull out this way.

2:21:36One of the guys in the club taught me some knife, hand-to-hand knife stuff, you know, to where I, when I grabbed a knife for the first time, I had it like this. And I was like, and he was like, no, and showed me how to spin it around. And military dude showed me how to use it that way. Because, you know, being big and stuff. And he was like, listen, you're no good if you don't know some of this. You know, a lot of guys that were big in my size, the bodybuilders, they couldn't throw a punch right there. You know, you could see it coming from five miles away. And we obviously we couldn't be like that.

2:22:08So there was no UFC MMA back in my day. So I was going to a local gym where they were boxing and hitting the bag and learning how to throw from my hip and straight out and everything like that. changed the dynamics of the power around for me. I thought I had a strong punch when I was just the meathead. And when them guys showed me how to throw from the hip in the throw, boy, it was powerful, right? I had a lot of power behind me. And then learning the knife tricks and stuff like that. So we never knew when it was going to be hand to hand, when we were going to walk into somewhere, they were going to grab us because they were doing the same thing.

2:22:44it's funny because i became friends with some of them guys after i exited that lifestyle in the true guys the outlaws i became friends with some um so that that that thing was uh i think that was 98 i think where we sat down and uh said let's let's settle our differences um i went up to prison when i came home in 2001 i was on a non-association and i got to know a few of them guys and here are their sides. And, you know, they were thinking the same thing. They weren't just trying to go murderous in the middle of the street, so they got caught and locked up. They were trying to plan things out so they could get away with it too, right?

2:23:26And they had a job to do, just like we had a job to do. Their job was to... So you guys are talking about how you were planning on fucking killing each other after you got out of prison together. Yeah. Great. I know. Sean, it was crazy. You got any... did they have any surprises that you were like, oh, man, that would have been a good one? I found out this, and I found out this from Chris Bayless, the retired ATF agent that we have here. And he interviewed one of these guys that flipped. So I used to hang out at this one strip club in Chicago Heights called Jimmy's. It was like my office. I was in there, you know, five, six days a week.

2:24:03If I wasn't in the city, I was in the suburbs at this place. and three of these guys were in a van out in the parking lot with fully automatic weapons my vet was parked i had a special spot for my vet that they let me park i parked right in front of the place like an idiot i had mr 187 on the license plate of my vet which was the penal code for murder in california i ended up getting that plate right and that was on my vet everybody knew my vet and they were sitting in a van automatic weapons waiting for me to walk out they were gonna open up that sliding door boom boom boom boom i'm gone i'm not getting the nine i'm not getting the 45 right so um and a chicago heights cop pulled up and he pulled up in the lot he stopped next to my corvette well he called me i knew the guy from the gym and he goes hey bro i see you're here he goes come on out i want to see you and say hi so as the cop's sitting next to my car and I come waltzing out the door and the cop gives me a hug and we're talking because I know I'm from the gym.

2:25:07Them outlaws see that and they're like, man, let's get out of here, back out of this alley and get us out of here, right? So they pulled out and I would have never known that, but Chris told me that later because when the interview, when one of them guys in that van flipped and worked for the government, he told them the story. We almost got bell. Wow. Yeah. wow so that was kind of crazy to hear that and i didn't hear that until i was sitting in my rico indictment and i got to meet chris and you know he was telling me he was like listen you you really do got a guardian angel on your shoulder and i said yeah why is that and he told me that story and i said wow and there was no way in the world what am i i'm gonna go you know they got me right there they all had automatic weapons and they were gonna gun me down right there yeah you know and And then later, about probably four or five years ago, I became really good friends with one of their former sergeant of arms.

2:26:03And he just passed away from cancer about a year ago. Super good dude. His name was Tony Wallenberg. He was their hitter back in the day. He was their sergeant of arms. He was the guy that I always heard about. If you run into Tony on the street, you better get the jump on him because he's prepared to go at any moment. He had that reputation. So when I got home from the Rico, I moved to Florida, you know, and rewinded a few years back, a mutual friend of mine called me and said he was sitting with Tony. And I go, I remember Tony. He goes, guess what? I said, what? He goes, he found the Lord. He said he has a relationship with the Lord.

2:26:40I go, come on. He goes, he said the same thing about you. I go, yeah, wow. He goes, you want to meet us for some lunch? And I said, man, Jody, I would love to meet you guys for lunch took one of my friends with me because i wasn't sure if he was on the old page right i was like okay and uh we went and met for some lunch and uh we started laughing and joking and telling some old stories he was he's he's been gone from the outlaws for many years and uh it was crazy to hear that because you know he told me he goes mel we were you were the guy man we were had our sights set on you we just knew we had a it had to be that perfect timing we couldn't just waltz into that gym, we knew what it was going to be.

2:27:20I'm like, oh, yeah, it would have been a shootout right on the spot. I wasn't, you know, if I would have seen you coming, I would have had to do what I had to do. So it was surreal to sit with Tony and talk to him and hear his side of the stories back from that day when he was the Sergeant of Arms in the height of that, the height of that war. And then he just passed, I don't even know if it's been a year, Sean, he passed from some lung cancer. but I got to be close with him. I'm still, I'm still close with his boys, with his sons. We became close like that. He left that world behind. I left that world behind and I seen a dude I liked and he seen a dude he liked.

2:27:59And, uh, I told him right before he passed, I said, if your boys ever need anything, cause they're like in their thirties, they're still in Chicago. I said, if your boys ever need anything, I said, please, Tony, tell him to call me. I know a lot of people they were in the construction business. Now I said, I know a lot of people in that lifestyle, man and i i talked to his kids for every holiday oh let's go yeah yeah so kind of surreal to hear what we know both sides were what was going on in our minds at that time i'll bet it is yeah man wow what what are you guys doing for money how does the club making money so the club in the whole you know does the club have to make money i mean it doesn't have to but it's nice to have a a treasury right so we would throw parties tickets to parties to get in full bars you know we have to call them donations so it didn't look like we were running any kind of thing so we'd say you know a bear is a two dollar donation or whatever it was a mixed drink is a five dollar donation and they'd get tickets um we put out a calendar every year the hell's angels put out a calendar every year with a member on the cover.

2:29:11I was on the 1996 calendar of the Hells Angels. I was on the front of the cover. And then every month in there would be a different Hells Angel from all around the world. So the calendars sold for like$30 a crack. You know, we had that. So selling the support shirts, the T-shirts and stuff like that, you know, hats and stuff like that, trinkets like that. So the club was making money for the club as far as you know you know in our in our bank account the individual guys whatever they wanted to do a lot of i told you a lot of the guys had jobs you know even even if it was when we switched from the henchmen to the angels they kept their jobs that guy that was the president jerry he kept his job at mac truck all the way to to he exited you know um or totally retired from there what about arms dealing drug dealing yeah prostitution yeah what about that stuff yeah So that's kind of what I got into because I didn't want a job and I didn't want to punch a clock.

2:30:10And so I was able to get my hands in that underworld with. So is that for you personally or is that for the club? For me personally. Yeah. So we paid dues every week for the club to keep the lights on, the air condition running, the building and everything like that. And I believe the dues were$30 a week back then. $30 we paid the dues and that went into the treasury. if guys had to travel our expenses were taken care of from the treasury but if you were doing something on the side individually we didn't kick to the club because there's a rico in itself right there because that higher up whoever's that me being the president if i'm on the top of that food chain and i'm getting kicked up you know there's a rico indictment there so we didn't ever do that whoever was doing anything on the side that was their own money so the so the club funds were actually they were procured legitimately yeah not or yeah not for a legal activity 100 like i said from the parties the shirts the the membership dues and everything like that um you know that's that's how the treasury was done nothing the individual was the individual i didn't kick a penny back to my charter for any of my drug sales or gun sales or anything that i was doing were you running women with my no no i loved them too much sean i was uh you know i was just into the being with the women and hanging out with them i never we never none of us ever did the prostitution stuff at all what kind of drugs were you dealing uh i wasn't with the cocaine i had a cocaine source that was outside of the club nothing from you know not they weren't members of the club and the the people i was unloading it to weren't in a motorcycle club i had some guys out east that that were taking them kilos of cocaine and automatic weapons.

2:32:00We were getting them SKS, Chinese rifles, back in the day. How would you get them? From a guy that was sourcing them out. We were told they were falling off a truck, but we had a guy that was falling off the truck scene. We had a guy that got his hands on them, not in the club, an outside guy that I happened to get to meet. So we were getting crates of them. You know, and them kind of things were okay because one of the guys knew how to saw that barrel down on that SKS from what I remember. So it was kind of a short, like a shotgun type deal. And you can hold it like that and shoot that way. So we were getting them by the crates back in the day.

2:32:42So I had my hand into that. Where would you keep them? I had a storage locker. A storage locker that only a couple of us knew about. Not everybody in the club knew it was there. just a few of my close guys knew that i had some stuff in this storage facility we'd keep them there but i would unload them pretty quick you know if i got some crates in i put put a tax on them and sold the crates and stuff like that you know um i had a great steroid connect who would you who would you sell them to i sold them to a a motorcycle club on the east coast and they were facilitating them where they were doing the same you know same same spot i was offloading the cocaine from you guys wouldn't keep any for yourself oh yeah oh yeah yeah we had a stash of uh an armory for ourselves to when we needed some stuff grenades we had the grenades you know by the grace of god we never was able to use them i mean there was a lot of plans going on and you're going to hear the stories of how the feds were able to run interference on them plans because they had the ATF agent up in Rockford that was prospecting for the Rockford Hells Angels.

2:33:55Hells henchmen slash angels at the time. When Chris got in, he got in when we were still henchmen. Wow. And they wanted to pull him out when things got crazy through the war. You know, when things, the bombings and stuff like that, they were like, hold on, we get you in here deep. you know so we were there was a few missions that we were going to do that we had all planned out to go get them guys and uh i remember one of them and i wasn't i was out of town and the fellows were going up to rockford and they called me on the phone and the member says hey we're pulled over on the highway i said what do you mean you're pulled over the illinois state police knocked us down on the highway and i said okay and he goes i said you guys are dirty right and they go of course And I said, oh, man.

2:34:41I said, okay, call me when you can. If you guys get locked up and you need bond, you know, call me. We'll get to get the treasury together and see what's going on. I'll be waiting for your call. And he called me back like 15 minutes later. And he goes, they turned us around, told us to get out of town, go back home. I go, what? I go, no, they didn't search nothing? He goes, no, nothing. And I, you know, I kind of thought it was weird, but I didn't know that that was the knockdown to turn us around because where we were going to get the outlaws in their in the support club at this party it was going to be a surprise on them all but they knew what we were doing because chris was a prospect and he had a full member a full member that brought him in holy shit knowing he who he was knowing who he was oh yeah he bought him he brought him in he got him he got himself in a jam, I believe, and Chris knows the story better than me.

2:35:39I knew the guy a little bit, the guy that was up in Rockford. I didn't know him great. He was a fairly new member. He was kind of older at the time. I kind of thought it was weird. He was in his 40s when they were telling me that they had this, his name was Grubb, that they had him up there prospecting. And I was like, how old is he? And they were like, oh, 46 or 47. And I'm like, Like, what's he having a midlife crisis? Like, tell him to buy a Corvette. Like, does he know what he's doing? He's 40-something years old. He wants to come into this club on what we're doing. But that was Chris's in.

2:36:10And he knew Chris was the agent and brought him around and vouched for him. So he was previous because Grubb sat in the meetings. So anytime that Mel and the crew are coming here, Chris would know. and Chris would leave because Chris never really wanted me to see him because we grew up in towns next to each other. You know, you've seen the sizzle reel I showed you. We grew up very close to each other. We ended up knowing some mutual people after we got to know each other. So Chris went out to Rockford to do the whole thing like that. So he had grub that was coming out and saying, hey, this Chicago crew is on their way here right now to go storm that place and get everybody in there.

2:36:54So they got knocked down on that one. I know there was another incident that they got knocked down on. Chris will have to refresh your memory on that one. And then I was like, wait a minute, this is too coincidental. How are they knowing what we're doing? How did they know to knock you guys over on the highway like that? Are they following us? It was just, but later we find out that Chris was getting fed all that information from the member. so now we were up kind of against more fronts we didn't even know about right and we didn't know that was happening so we're like man every time we go to try to make a move here the last two times we've got knocked down we've got pulled over and like it's like they they knew we were coming they knew we were coming wow yeah when's the first time you met chris um it's funny story so I never seen him, obviously.

2:37:47He recalls a story that we were going to, I was coming to the clubhouse, he couldn't leave. We were going to a party in San Francisco. And as a prospect, you know, he was, he had to go. And he said he came up to me and introduced himself. Hey, Chris, prospect Rockford, because that's what you had to do to the members as you were a prospect. You had to introduce yourself to every member. you know i i probably didn't pay attention hey how you doing good to meet you that's about as far as it went but um so the first time i seen him is our doors got kicked in four of us on that rico uh the morning um two rockford hell's angels me and my sergeant of arms from chicago kicked our doors in um he wasn't at my door my raid he was out grabbing the rockford boys because he knew him.

2:38:35So they got to find out on the spot that Chris Decker was his last name, was actually Chris Bayless, undercover ETF. That's been prospecting for you guys. So they got the shock of their life that morning, right? They got their doors kicked in, federal SWAT team is there, and there they're seeing Chris, who they thought was their prospect. so we get down they bring everybody to the federal courthouse in peoria which was like about three hours from chicago and i was the last one they brought there it was my sergeant of arms the two rockford boys they were all in a cell together and um the feds told them we got one more coming and they were like road and they're like road you know so they brought me in there yeah sat with them they give us the indictment we're in our street clothes because they just knocked our doors and raided my house at about 5 15 in the morning all of us at that same time they did us all at the same time so you can't get no phone calls out so we're reading the indictment and everything and it's it's this thick sean wright and i'm looking at all this stuff and you're shooting on the highway the bombing the attempted murder here the drug deals and i'm just reading this whole indictment like oh boy we're no bond i was already to the state and federal prison so i kind of knew the time and how the law worked right this is oh four december of oh four um so now they bring us in the courtroom so we're sitting in the courtroom none of the boys have been to the federal courtrooms yet right my sergeant of arms was locked up for the state he wasn't to the feds yet and i'm looking up at the at the u.s attorney standing at his desk you know before we start the actual hearing.

2:40:23And I see a biker-looking dude, ponytail, beard. And I'm looking at him, and I'm looking at him, and I go... I said, hey, guys, who's the biker-looking dude? I go, anybody know who that dude is that's standing next to... I go, that's the U.S. attorney that's getting everything ready. The judge ain't on the seat yet, right? We're sitting there in handcuffs at one table. And I go, who's the biker-looking guy? And the Rockford guys kind of put their head down. And they said, his name is Chris Bayless. He goes, he was our prospect. Do you remember him? And I said, no. He goes, he was a prospect for us for a while.

2:40:59And we just found out he's a federal agent. And I went, hmm, F minus on that one. Like, you know, like, wow, okay. Because they were dealing with him. You know, they didn't know. and Chris got in and did his job and did what he was supposed to do, right? And got in there and infiltrated it and was able to put this RICO together. Because the agent that was working our case before Chris, this guy by the name of Ron Holmes, and we always knew that there was the RICO stuff that they could get us with, right? Well, this guy just was a picture taker. And he had a million pictures. He had an obsession with me.

2:41:36He had a million pictures of me, parties, hair and there. but they didn't have nothing to move forward from. So they had this case that they were trying to put against us, and he was like the head of it. And Chris will tell you the story a little bit better, but they got rid of him. They pushed him out, and Chris got in there and took it over. And Chris was doing the undercover infiltration of these clubs. He already did the outlaws a handful of years before us. He got in with an outlaw chapter, and he did an infiltration on them. Nobody knew. You know, we didn't know him. We didn't talk. They couldn't say, hey, this guy's a fed.

2:42:11They weren't talking to us. We weren't talking to them. So he knew the infiltration stuff with the clubs, and that's what he did in Rockford. So that was the first time that I seen him when we were sitting in that courtroom. Wow. Laid eyes on him. Shit. Yeah. Damn.

2:42:29Crazy.

2:42:32So we were talking about the bombings, the attempted murders the murders

2:42:44how are you keeping a relationship with your daughter during all this who from a distance sean i was keeping excuse me i was keeping the the family stuff very separated the same with my girlfriends at the time i wasn't bringing anything around them. I wasn't bringing them around that lifestyle. I didn't want them to get hurt in that lifestyle. So I was, you know, bopping in and seeing my daughter, you know, uh, visiting with her at my mom's house or wherever, you know, she was living with my ex, uh, Jenny at the time. So, you know, seeing her when I can, you know, financially, like I said earlier, was there for her, but, um, I didn't want to, I didn't know where it was going to go.

2:43:32you know there's always an unwritten rule no homes and no families i was gonna ask that i said yeah it was an unwritten rule no homes and no families you know um you know and uh it got violated a little bit on their end you know um they beat up a uh one of our guy's girlfriends that was a bartender they they walked into a bar and surrounded the bar and took hold of the bar and she was behind the bar and they busted her nose, you know. And that brought it to home, you know. Now you're bringing the girls and the family members in and stuff like that, you know. So, you know, and we did that exactly back to them, you know.

2:44:18We didn't want to do it. The last thing I wanted to do was go sock up some girl, but you brought us there and I was the one that wanted to do it and I was the one who did it. You did it? Mm-hmm. I did it to one of their girls. It was in a strip club. She worked in a strip club. So, you know, like I said, not something I'm proud of, not something I wanted to do, but, you know, where were we going next, you know, to the homes, to the mothers and fathers, that now we were a real street gang, you know what I mean? Drive-bys and stuff like that. Was it going to get to that? It never did. But that unwritten rule was like, we saved it for the street.

2:44:57If we caught you, we caught you. I remember one time I walked into one of my spots where I ate all the time. I just got done training. I went to this spot, and I always had this good chicken and steak there. Walked in there, and I seen one of the outlaws with this girl and his kid. The kid, I don't know if it was his wife, his girlfriend, but there was three of them, and there was a little kid with a girl and him, and I knew him. I seen who he was. and he's seen me and his eyes got big and I walked over to the table I had two guys with me not in the club two just friends of mine that I worked out with and I said I know you know who I am I said I know who you are and he goes yeah and I said okay maybe you guys wouldn't do this but get up get out of here you got this little one with you go and that's what he did so I felt that that was the right thing to do right I always wonder if the roles were reversed with what would they would have did maybe they would have got me I don't know so you know it's an untold story but you know I never wanted to do that I'm looking at this little boy you know five six years old and you know he didn't know what was going on I didn't make a big deal of it but I you know I didn't want to be smashing his dad or his mom's boyfriend at the table and the if he was there by himself sean it was on the spot on site that's that was our rule if you seen them you had to get them one way or the other whether it was just this if you could do this back in the day and get away with it do what you thought you could do to get away with the good if it was public and you had to get them but get them you can't be in the same room as them and and that's how they were with us they didn't hesitate for one second to try to when they ran into us to take it to us there was no hesitation there was no waiting if we ran into each other it was right on the spot so i kind of had to keep all that separated with my the girlfriends i've had you know you we were talking earlier and you heard the story i had multiple uh girlfriends that i that were living in different houses obviously different spots and you know when a condo and stuff like that all spread out you know and i just never wanted to put them on jump street to be on the back of my motorcycle and they were gonna see me and say hey we're gonna take the shot no matter what and then here i'm telling their family or whatever if you know that you know i just didn't want that in my conscience so you know and all the guys used to tell me you just don't want nothing covering your patch up you want everybody to see who you are riding the bike right you don't want nobody covered and you don't want to ride nobody because you don't want to cover your patch up.

2:47:39But you know, it was heavy. I look back now, Sean, and I think this, bro, like I couldn't do that again for all the money in the world. Where I'm at now, I'm much older, but I just could not fathom that, the stress. I mean, I get stressed talking about it sometimes. It brings me back when we get deep. It brings me back and I think about that. You don't talk about it too much. You know, so I've been in Florida 11 years and a lot of my friends out there now, they got to meet a lot of the ex-angels that come and visit me and they get to hear the road stories. You know, they know me as Mel, but they get to hear the road stories and stuff.

2:48:17And we tell some campfire stories, you know, sitting around. But, you know, it's nothing that I'm proud of. And I say, man, we did this. I just I don't my mind don't go to that. It goes to what did we do here? I mean, think about Bonnie. I think about Forbi. I think about Roger who's still living. I believe he's still in the club, but, you know, getting blown up in that truck. I think about the violence that we, you know, put ourselves into and stuff like that. And when I think about it, you know, I try to block it out and I don't talk about it a lot, but, you know, getting ready for this movie.

2:48:55And that's obviously a part of the journey of my old part right and like uh like the rock says like dwayne we call him dacom dj like dj says no you you have to go to that that part of your mind to tell because we knew you back then to just to show where you're at now and the inspiration that you are and the way you gave your life to the lord and you never looked back and you try to help out everybody that's from that lifestyle or that person in rock bottom. I go, yeah, I get it, I get it. And it was hard. It was hard for them to get me in character for that sizzle reel. It was hard for them to, you know, get that deepness out of me, because I think I block it out and, you know.

2:49:38But then, you know. Do you remember the first time that you put a hit out on somebody? Um, I don't think it was really like, hey we're you know it was in a hole right like we didn't target one dude from over there we were like whoever we can get you know obviously the the easier pickings the better right money at his shop four by at work as much as they wanted to get me and stuff i made it a little bit harder for him you know any people would say i don't know how we you were out every night i mean you can bring a thousand people in here and interview them and from strip club owners to bar owners if you had a happening nightclub in the city of chicago i was coming in with my patch on with my crew no ifs ands or buts i wanted to hang out i wanted to be in the street scene the night scene the then we had hit the biker bar so my life consisted of being out constantly i didn't have a night off if i did i mean i just hung out with in the house for the night or relaxed or caught up on some sleep maybe you know but do you remember the first time somebody was killed because of an order you put out um well this i like to say it like this to the shootings and all the violence of course i had my hand into whether i was there physically and most of them i was or whether it was the fellows doing it you know it's like i i didn't really have to to clean up the phrase i didn't have to put the order out you know what i mean everybody knew what they needed to do was being in the we all had to pull our own weight out of that 13 guys nobody was in the house feeding their cats and growing gardens when we were all out on the streets we wouldn't allow that to happen You were coming out.

2:51:29You were participating. You were, you know, being active. If you weren't, you were out the door. You had to participate. You had to be a part of it. Our brothers were getting killed, and you weren't going to just sit at home and, you know, plant tulips. Was the first guy that was killed the guy that got shot off his bike? He lived. He lived. He lived. He evil-kneveled it all the way off an exit ramp. and collapsed in front of a liquor store. And I believe, I think he got a colostomy bag from it. He was shot with like a revolver driving down the highway. It was a chance thing. Nobody was, it just happened to, one of my guys was driving down the highway and there he was tooling next to him out of the blue.

2:52:16You know, and I knew about it. That's why I got part of it. It was a predicate act in my RICO. And, you know, and I said, do what you can do. if it's not too crowded and you can get them get them and then we all knew that mentality you know if we looked around and there was three cop cars behind him obviously you're not going to pull the gun out and shoot him but if you can get away with it do it and uh you know he was the he was the one that got shot up on the highway and like i said i ended up you know getting the truck back into a body shop my friend owned and getting it repainted because you know it was a saturday afternoon in Chicago and like in the middle of July or something like that.

2:52:54A lot of people probably seen what went down, you know, so I got that done and, you know, nobody got caught on the scene. But one of the guys that knew about this happening from Minnesota, he flipped. And when he flipped, he gave that up. So then I ate the predicate act part about, you know, I might as well have been there because it's still the same charge. I ate the predicate act of knowing it was happening. Of course, I was the president. They tried to get you for ordering it and then cleaning the crime scene up with getting the truck repainted and stuff. As much as we were trying to cover every base of not getting a RICO indictment, it's just pretty impossible.

2:53:39Like I said, no money went to the club. So you're thinking, okay, there's no kick-ups there. but everything we did is a predicate act and how I learned how the RICO works. So if you're in the club with me and me and Sean go out and we find out that there's a couple of the other team in this bar and we beat them with ball-peen hammers and stuff, we didn't do that because of Sean Ryan and Mel Chancey. We did that for the Enterprise, which is the Hell's Angels, right? So that's a predicate act. even though we didn't get caught to beating think it was a simple battery charge or something like that that all gets wrapped up into that whole rico thing what is rico racketeered influenced corrupt organization okay it's the it's the it's the organization right and every act that you do that's you know obviously you're breaking the law can be thrown in on that right so when i I first got this RICO indictment, and I had a really good lawyer.

2:54:39My lawyer was my friend since I'm like 21 years old. He became a really prominent lawyer, so that's who I used, and he's coming to visit me. We had no bond. They no bonded us that day. We're sitting in a facility, a holding facility, and I'm reading these charges, and I'm like, I wasn't there on this one. I wasn't there on this. What's going on here? I go, this is, it's 2004. This is from 94 and 95, so I'm telling my lawyer, like, pj is this the weakest shit you've ever seen or what's going on with this rico can we fight this thing and he goes mel there's a 10-year investigation here he goes i got they're they're gonna give us over paperwork that's gonna fill you know all the all this all the grand jury stuff that's gonna fill my room he goes i gotta look into this and so months went by and you know he's doing his due diligence on this and you know coming to see me three hours down the road and um I said what's going on with all this and he said man they got all these people these predicate acts I go what's a predicate act and he goes all this stuff that you guys did wasn't for just the individual it's because the the organization is a corrupt enterprise right I go what about all this old stuff he goes well let me tell you how RICO works there's no statute of limitations when they start the RICO investigation on you so what happened in 94 is just as good as it happened in in 2004.

2:55:59And I go, what do you think the chances are with a jury? You know, because I didn't know Chris at the time, right? I didn't know. We didn't have no relationship. And I go, what do you think the chances are with the jury? And he goes, well, it's going to show the juries that you guys have been morons, not for the last year or two, but you guys have been bad guys for the last 10 years. Continual criminal enterprise. He goes, Mel, I don't think we can beat this in a trial. and I said okay I said well then what are you thinking he goes well they want to sit down with you and it kind of proved to you in a proffer what they can what they're going to prove and what they're going to present against you up there you know and I said oh man I said you know and he goes I they they he was talking to the U.S.

2:56:39attorney and Chris my lawyer was you know and he goes and they they seem pretty cool now they don't seem like they're trying to knock your head off or get you to go and hit, you know, trials all over and do all that stuff. And I said, yeah, I can't do that. Where are you going to put me? Poduck, Iowa, the way I look and stuff like that. I guess I can't do that, you know? So that's when I sat down and that's when they opened up their end. And like my lawyer said, he's like, we're playing cards. They're going to show us their hand. They're going to be honest with us, what they're going to be able to prove.

2:57:13We're going to take the stand against you. And that's what it was about in there. I got to know Chris from sitting with him, seeing he was a good dude. He wasn't coming at me like, swearing at me and all that stuff. He said, hey man, you had a job to do. I had a job to do and here we are. And I said, okay. And it was 10 years. They didn't want nothing further. They just wanted the guys that all of us here, basically, we all pled to our own charges, right? So we saved them the trial. we saved ourselves from trial because none of us were beating that trial all you had to do is get found guilty under rico of one predicate act and that really cinches the rico in so you know um and i had a criminal history i was to the state joint already i was to the fed joint right back to back with the state and now i was home for four years so my criminal history was high up on the federal guidelines because the top of the guideline book is your criminal history and the side is your offense level so if i would have you know he manned up and uh told him screw you guys you guys are taking me to trial and lost the trial i was sitting in the 20-year mark somewhere at 85 yeah so that's when i said i said let me come in and i can clean up my end on this right without hurting anybody without doing anything to my co-defendants and making anybody you know i say this.

2:58:33Not one person in that club had to spend a dime to call a lawyer for what us three did or said. That stopped with us. The RICO indictment was four guys. It ended there with us and everybody pled guilty to their own individual charges on the RICO. So where we've seen some cases on RICO cases where guys flipped and then they had superseding indictments where they brought three more people in because of what the people said before them. You know what I mean? And I never wanted it to go that way. I didn't want to hurt the three guys that I was there with. And I knew vice versa, that they didn't want to hurt me either.

2:59:12So when I had the chance to sit down and said, okay, and I didn't have to. We could have sat down with them. I wasn't giving them nothing up that they didn't know. They had the whole indictment there. And if we didn't like the way it was going, we would have just backed out and said, hey, we're either going to take you to trial or I'm going to go plead to the judge just on my own, plead guilty. So Chris was always a gentleman to me, sitting in them proffers. It was always cool and it was all done and over with. When I got sentenced and was heading off to prison, I thanked him and the U.S. attorney.

2:59:41U.S. attorney was by the name of Tate Chambers. And we lost Tate, I think, about five or six years ago. He passed, I believe, to some cancer. And he was a good dude to me in there. You know, if they were in the room pointing everything at me and swearing at me and screaming at me and we're doing all this, you can imagine how abrasive that would have been. I would have been like, take me back to my cell. but uh but chris and tate they were super great my lawyer liked them and we liked the outcome of it all you know and that was always what i wanted to do i wanted to make sure i wasn't hurting nobody else i didn't want nobody else to to suffer over me or hey you can get four more years off your sentence if you do this i i just didn't didn't want to live with that you know and they made it very easy for us to take our lumps and plead guilty to what they had us on so it was a win for the government.

3:00:31You know, I was already out of the club. When I got recode, I left because, you know, what happened was, I'll rewind it. In 98, I went away to the state penitentiary. I beat up a guy real bad that was beating up an ex-girlfriend of mine, that I was very good friends with her and her family still. And the only reason that me and Kendall broke up with each other is because Kendall wanted more time out of me. I was with her for a couple years. she knew about the other girls they all knew about each other but Kendall wanted some more time and I said Kendall I can't give you no more time I got the outlaws trying to knock my head off the shoulders the fed boys are trying to put me in the penitentiary for a life I can't give you no more so on that note let's just let's just remain friends I love you I love your mom and dad they owned a big bar in our neighborhood where we all hung out five o 'clock in the morning joint Sean every hoodlum and every street person was in this place, but it was a happening joint.

3:01:30And I said, choose your next dude wisely, please. You know, I love you, man, but we got to part our ways. Well, she got mad at me, and she ended up dating this guy. And the guy, you know, at the time, just was a jealous guy and ended up putting his hands on her. You know, she was a good-looking girl, and he got jealous of the people that knew her and kissed her on the cheek and stuff like that so was he a biker no just the street dude they were a couple years younger than me i believe yeah kendall's i'm 57 now she's probably like 53 4 him too and um and i got wind of it her sister came and told me that uh this was happening and i didn't believe it at first because i was like there's no way that kendall's gonna let this dude put his hands on her her dad was a former marine and i mean a marine marine you know celebrating the birthday every year at his bar i mean you know and uh there's no way that she would let that happen well it was the truth it was happening so um once we dug a little deeper into it and found out uh you know i wasn't too happy with that so i get into a house where he and did a little work in that house.

3:02:45I like to... It's a very unique story. And me and him have a relationship these days. It's really bizarre, Sean, but the way it turned into. And so we got caught in the house. Cops came in, SWAT team came in, kicked it. Do you want to talk about what happened in the house? Um... We track our sleep, fine-tune our macros, and try every biohack under the sun. But the truth is, your peak performance starts at the cellular level. Armora Colostrum is nature's original superfood. Colostrum is packed with over 400 bioactive nutrients that fortify gut health, strengthen immune health, fuel performance, and more.

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3:04:12I'd like to say, I'd like to keep it this way. He got beat up in that house pretty severely through some duct tape and some stuff like that. His friend got away. He came in the house with a friend. The friend got out, ran to the local 7-Eleven. It was really cold out. It was December 16th. You never forget the day you got arrested. and it was you know freezing cold out 10 20 degrees you know freezing cold up and uh there was some cops in the 7-eleven and the guy said mel chancy and the hell's angels got my friend kidnapped in the house and we didn't know that the guy was gone like that um and uh i was getting busy with him in the house why the why the fellows were packing up some of her stuff and getting some clothes together.

3:05:07And it wasn't until we were ready to leave the house and I told one of the fellows, go warm the car up so we can get these guys out of here. And he came running back in and we looked outside and we looked outside and the whole street was just lit up. It was about 10 o 'clock at night, pitch dark. They had spotlights on and everything. They had the SWAT team there and we were just hit now. They knew we were in the house. So after that, when they came in and kicked the doors and they took him away from us right got him and stuff locked locked us all up you know brought us you know locked us up brought us to the local their local precinct and uh you know we all said hey we'll get our lawyers and stuff so about one about 1 32 o 'clock in the morning hours later I'm in one of the lockups that you know we're all separated my two other guys hells angels were in the house with me there was three of us they're all in different you know lock up spots, you know, and I hear my name, Mel.

3:06:08And I kind of wake up, I'm freezing, Sean, I'm laying on this metal thing. I got my hoodie wrapped over me like a blanket. And I think I'm dreaming and I hear Kendall's voice and she goes, Mel. And I go, Kendall. And she goes, yeah. And I jump up. I go, what are you doing here? She goes, they came and got me from my dad, from George's house. They came and got me and locked me up. They're charging me with everything they're charging you guys with and i said oh i said kendall i'm sorry i said but uh it'll work out for you they can't you weren't at that house they can't charge you with this like you like we masterminded this through her you know so we went that morning time and got in front of the judge december 17th and uh heard all the charges attempted murder kidnapping home invasion the least one being an aggravated battery right and uh no bond immediately no bond same with kendall so we're all getting ready they're getting ready to take us to you know cook county the county jail now no bond so our lawyers get up there and they say your honor you know they said well the judge goes well they found guns in the house they found ski masks and everything and and and our lawyer says them guns were nothing to do with uh um you know my clients Them guns were in the house.

3:07:26They were the guys, you know, her boyfriend at the time, you know. So the judge said, well, we're going to run, the state wants to run fingerprints on them. If their fingerprints don't come back on the gun, then we'll get these guys back in here. So they set the court date for Christmas Eve, December 24th, to go back in front of this judge now to see if our fingerprints came on all this stuff that they found in the house. No fingerprints on the guns, of course, right? so they set us a bond a high bond i think i needed 50 or 60k to get out fellows were right around their 30 or 40k like that so we all get out christmas morning this is christmas eve our treasurer comes gives the money to to the state we all get out christmas morning like i don't know six seven o 'clock in the morning so we fought this case from the street for 14 months.

3:08:21We were all home with our attorneys and stuff and fighting this case from the street for 14 months before we ended up getting the four-year sentence that we got. We got found not guilty on the attempted murder, the kidnapping, the home invasion, because it was their dad's house that they were renting. He let us in, and we got found guilty of aggravated battery with a weapon being a baseball bat and uh and some pliers pliers yeah so um so that was my first time going to the penitentiary and it was kind of funny because um i used to always say that to the fellows you know like we're gonna end up in two spots the tombstone or the penitentiary.

3:09:12And now as I'm walking through these penitentiaries, I was like, boy, this sucks. I lost my freedom, right? And I wasn't cool with losing my freedom. A guy like me, I was active. I was all over the place, right? You know, I was very out and about, and the women and, you know, being that social guy. So I say, you know, losing my freedom that first time opened my eyes on things, you know? So that's why I was to go back to saying, when I was in that state penitentiary, the feds indicted me on something they called mail fraud. I had an IROC Z28 at the time, and I had given it to two FBI agents. They gave me two grand for the car.

3:09:59I reported it stolen through Allstate, pocketed the money. you would if that's all that would have happened I could have got him on entrapment because they brought the crime to me one of the guys that was a henchman with me back in the day he flipped for the government he got busted by the feds for all this drug dealing and guns and unbeknownst to us we didn't know it and they kept them on the street and I was the target so they were trying to get this guy to get me in there to do to sell them guns to sell them drugs to do a murder for hire which none of them i wanted no part of and they were posing as mobsters fromst louis i didn't know him i was doing some research on him with some mobsters i knew from chicago and um uh nobody knew him but i didn't think that my guy was bad i trusted my guy and i said well you sell him the guns and the drugs you've got the same shit go ahead you I don't need the money you do it you know so he really couldn't get me on anything well they they brought me to this warehouse and they had this warehouse and they had boats and cars and bikes in there Shawn you know I go what do you guys do with all this stuff always put them in crates and we send them overseas it's all stolen merchandise and I said really they said yeah Jim was telling us that you got you got this die rock Z 28 you're trying to sell right and I go yeah I got about 10 grand of tunes in it it's pretty badass car i go but i don't know nobody seems like they can they want to buy it right it's got a lot of stuff on it they said well we'll take it that's what you do with it they told me what to do we'll give you two grand i said okay that sounds great okay well i could have got him on entrapment but i brought him some more cars i furthered the crime right as i learned later in life what that meant you furthered the crime you brought him two more cars right so when i was in the state penitentiary the feds came and indicted me on that mail fraud case so i left the state penitentiary switched handcuffs with the marshals and the sally part and they took me to my first federal prison in pekin illinois i spent uh i got 18 months on that and uh 85 that did like 13 or 14 months 12 months 13 months whatever that 85 percent was on that so now i had a state conviction and a federal conviction.

3:12:18But that is when I came home from that. I had something that they call non-association where I couldn't be around any of the guys. If I walked in a bar and they were there, I had to leave. If I walked in a restaurant, I was the one who had to take the responsibility to leave because I couldn't be around the club. And that gave me that time to really concentrate and figure life out. You know, I wanted, now I wanted to be in my daughter's life. I wanted to be in my mom and dad's life. I wanted to be the guy that I was before I took this journey. So, you know, it gave me that time to reflect in them penitentiaries.

3:12:51And I got back my connection with the Lord. I was constantly in fellowship with him. I was running a prayer group in the state and the federal prisons, reading the Bible, just getting into the word, right? Everything that I wasn't doing before. Why did you get into it? Um, you know, I, when I was in them penitentiaries and I was thinking to myself, like, man, how did I get here? I was the least likely dude to become what I became coming from the family. I came from, I was that least likely dude. My mom and dad's friends were like, we seen little Melvin on TV. What's going on there? Like they were, He's running the Hells Angels?

3:13:35No. You know, my mom and dad would be like, you know? And that's when I really, I had that time away. I got, now I'm out of the forest and I can see the trees, and I'm like, man, how was I living life here? My daughter, I'm not gonna be around her. I just did back-to-back penitentiary stays. How old was your daughter at the time? Um, let's see, ten? Ten? Ten years old when I went away. yeah 10 years old so you know and she would come and I you know a couple times not much because they were crying and I break my heart and same with my mother seeing me in the visiting rooms and I'm watching them cry and it was breaking my heart knowing that I was okay back behind these walls I wasn't having any issues back there you know and I was protected I was good and they were the ones crying and paying for it you know I'd call home and check in with my mom and dad nightly every night my dad was sick at the time he was a bad diabetic my prayers were that he would hang on until i got home and not pass away right and um so i all that was in my mind sean it was all playing it was like a movie i was watching and that's when i i got back centered and said all right lord i'm here i am but don't let me be a hypocrite don't let me listen to your word hear your word.

3:14:58Don't let me fellowship with you right now. If I'm going to be that dude that goes and hits the streets and throws everything back and I'm going to go right back to where I'm at. You know, you hold my tomorrows. And that's how I used to pray to him and say, you got me from this day on. Right. And then when I came home, I had the non-association, which now I couldn't be around the club. So now I started living my own life again. I had a good friend of mine that owned big nightclubs in the city of Chicago. And he said to me, he goes, Hey, you need a job now, don't you? And I go, I need a job, Frankie.

3:15:30And he says, okay. He goes, why don't you come work for me? And I said, I don't want to bounce on your floors. That's not what I'm looking to do. And he goes, man, Mel, I need you to run, put a security team together for me. You know, everybody we're doing hip hop nights. We're doing all these different nights. You know, them all from the gangster disciple leaders to the vice Lord leaders, to the street people, put a team of security guys together so our nights we he goes we're making big money but we're you know we're in the city of chicago and we have every gangster coming in here right and i said okay because i just need your presence there and i said okay so i put some security teams together and we were all doing our stuff on the floor and making sure everything was safe so now i was living a whole different lifestyle right and uh i think i said this earlier you know I'm like, okay, Lord, I'm home.

3:16:19I'm not in the club no more. I'm not selling drugs, guns, shooting dudes off motorcycles and making all these violent calls here. I'm a pretty good guy right now, but the womanizing thing just, it advanced itself. It's crazy as I could say now, because now I didn't have the club taking up my time. Well, and you just spent, what, four years in prison with no women? With no women, right. So now I was like... Yeah, yeah, right, bro. Now I was like focused on, you know, my life making legit money from the, you know, from the nightclubs and, you know, a whole new array of women of the downtown nightclub scene.

3:16:59So I was right back into the one after the another, which was breaking my mother's heart because, you know, her and my dad were together since they've been kids. My two sisters were married when they were teenagers. And here I am, mama's boy out running around with every girl that passes my way. Right. my mom didn't like that my mom was like when are you kind of settled down i used to tell her mom you raised me with so much love i gotta pass it around she hated that shot i said i just gotta share could you imagine my old italian mother i'm telling her that right she's like she's like oh she gets so mad at me the rosary beads in her hand so um and that was uh that's what really made me think about life and you know spending time with my daughter and reconnecting with her and seeing and my parents all the time now and not being in the club.

3:17:47I still had a motorcycle because I technically was still in the club. I didn't quit the club yet because I couldn't quit while I was on non-association. If you're going to leave the club, you have to come in the room and do it. You have to do it the same way you come in. You can't just call up, hey, I quit the club, come and get your stuff. You got to man up and do it like that. So I was on non-association. The fellows knew. They couldn't come and see me. I couldn't come and see them. As much as that, you know they weren't liking it and i wasn't liking it but that was the law i couldn't if i you know they were on me because the rico wasn't yet chris and the crew was still trying to get this rico indictment on me so this would have been they were watching me constantly to see if i was around any of the club and i wasn't and then when i got off my non-association i quit i said you know what i just i can't do this no more and the fellas asked me why and i said i I can't give 100%.

3:18:41And if I can't give 100 % to something, especially this lifestyle, what's it going to do? It's going to get somebody hurt. It's going to get somebody in trouble. I don't want to be slipping like that. I'm not into it the way I was into it no more. My focus is not this no more. My focus is my life and what I want to do with my family and stuff. So they can't make you stay in. It's not the mob, you know, or it's, you know, you can't get out. If you want to leave the motorcycle clubs, speaking back from my day, if you were up to date on your dues and you didn't owe the club no money, hand in all your stuff, see you down the road.

3:19:16You're good. You don't want to be part of the club no more. We can't make you stay. If you force the guy to stay and then something happens, you go into a gas station and you're filling up your bike and here comes the other team and now a shootout happens and he didn't want to be there in the first place, guess where his mind's going? I didn't want to do this in the first place. Let me talk to these feds. so you don't never want to make a guy stay in something he didn't want to do you know interesting yeah i would not have expected that yeah what that you can't leave yeah yeah no pushback nothing i mean i was close with the fellows you know they were a little bit of as far as like come on bro what are you doing don't you know trying to get me to stay like i said the guys used to go over to my mom and dad's house when i was in the in the in the joints the first time They knew I called up every night because every night I called to check on my mom and dad.

3:20:05Every night. So my mom would say, you know, he's calling about 7 o 'clock. And three, four of them would show up and they'd pass the phone around. I'd go, what's going on? No, we're over by mom's. I'm like, yeah, they're like, we're eating pasta and meatballs. And, you know, my mom was an old Italian, made all her food by hand, you know. Rolled the sausage out and everything like that. And I go, nice, nice, man. They always looked out. The fellows were looking out for my mom and dad and being over there and hanging out, you know. So push back like that, that they didn't want me to leave, but no push back like you ain't going nowhere else.

3:20:33That doesn't happen in that world, you know. Some guys from some other charters called me up and said, why don't you transfer hair? And I said, I'm not leaving because I don't like the fellows here. I just can't do this lifestyle no more. Gave 14 years of my life, 13 years of my life to that. I said, and when I was in that realm, I was in that realm. I wasn't half doing half ass and nothing, Sean. I was down for the cause, whatever it took. I meant that, the penitentiary, the tombstone. I wasn't the guy that was like, all right, you guys are going to go do this. I'll see you later. I'll be in the spa.

3:21:11I couldn't do that. I was the first one running in the doors. How hard was that for you to leave?

3:21:20It was a little hard. I had a lot of good relationships with a lot of guys around the country that I had to call them up on the phone and say, hey, before you see it on the fax, go out this week. I left the club, I quit the club, and they were like, what? A couple of guys were like, come here. Why don't you transfer here? And that's when I said I'm not leaving because I don't like the fellows. I'm just leaving because I can't give no more to this life. I can't do it. I'm breaking hearts, my mom and dad, my daughter. It's time for me to focus on my life that I've made here. I have to give my daughter my attention now.

3:21:53you know so a little hard knowing that i wouldn't have them relationships with these guys because when you leave you leave you're not around no more you're the afterthought they continue to roll on continue to do what they do the club grows the club whatever they do they're you're just not a part you know maybe if you go to a party once in a while or see them and stuff like that but you're not on the everyday call list no more it's it's over for you so um but my mind was made up well how did you i mean we had talked about you know the addiction to adrenaline war how do you deal with that how are you getting your fix um you know after i left with that addiction um i didn't replace it with anything i don't think sean i just really was focusing on my relationship with my family and the lord when i tell you i i said please don't let me be that hypocrite you know even though i was running around the women i didn't finally i didn't know about the full surrender until the rico and when i was in the cell but i was not doing the bad stuff and i was you know fellowship and having that relationship with the lord and running the nightclubs you know i was still getting my fix with the women and stuff and uh i was glad to be out of that violence and that turmoil that i created around myself i was like a relief when i went to prison that first time you know the state and federal prison it was almost like it was like a breath of fresh air because i didn't realize i didn't think i was stressed on the street because i loved it but it is stressful knowing that the feds are trying to get you right knowing the feds are trying to get you knowing the the you know the outlaws wanted me dead in the whole nine yards i didn't think i was on under stress but i was and when i got in themselves i I was like, man, kind of free for a minute here, you know?

3:23:51So I don't think I was trying to replace it. I was just trying to live that new life, you know, and praying that none of the old stuff came back on me. I didn't know what was going to happen in the street. Now everybody knew, you know, that I came home. The non-association's over right before the RICO. It was months. I think I left the club in April of 2004, somewhere around there, and we got indicted in, I believe, December. So I wasn't gone long, but it was on the street now. Hey, milk with the Hells Angels. He's no longer in the club. I didn't know what anybody else was going to think. All of a sudden, I knew the outlaws didn't love me now.

3:24:32Oh, he's a great guy now. He's not in the club. They still didn't like me. I always kind of look over my shoulder with that and wondering what was going to happen here. Even though the truce was on, by the time I got home from prison, that was already getting violated. They were already nitpicking at each other when I came home in that 2001 era. They were starting to go from 97. They were starting to now not practice the good neighborhood policy no more, the good neighbor policy, and violating some of the stuff that we said we wouldn't do. But now it wasn't my fight no more. I didn't have a horse in the race.

3:25:08And one of the leaders called me up and said, hey, we can't deal with that dude that's the president now in Chicago. when i said i can't help you out on that one i don't have no ifs ands or buts about it it's not my fight no more i'm out you have to deal with that guy you know i'm out completely i quit so you know another by the grace of god they just left me be you know and you know and then you know being in that lifestyle there's always the next uh new hit that's coming somebody they're gonna be aggravated with you know somebody's gonna get your attention all the time that in in that life right new club this that it's always you're gonna they got enough fights on their hand right yeah so i was okay you know yeah damn and then you went back then i went back then i went back yeah then the rico came how did that i mean how did that come about so you know we knew that that it was lurking in the backgrounds through them years you know and thinking about everything that we did and through that war.

3:26:15I always heard about it.

3:26:19So now it's the months of 2004, the summer of 2004, and a couple of friends called me up and said, hey, we got a subpoena, my buddy with the body shop, my good friend. He said, hey, I got a subpoena. I said, for what? He said, to go down to peoria uh for a grand jury something to do with a rico case with you and i said okay and i seen him and i said hey bro and i said um obviously they know that uh he painted this vehicle from and he said i'm not going to go there and say anything i go you have to they already know one of the guys flipped i i i knew what's happening i said if you go and perjure yourself you're going to end up getting yourself locked up i put you in that position i I asked you to go do that for us.

3:27:10And I don't want to see you get locked up. I can't afford a lawyer for you two now either. So you're going to have to go down in that grand jury and say what they know. Don't catch yourself lying. And then a couple months later, now it's a little more towards the end of 2004, I get a call from a girl that I was, one of the girls that I was dating out from Rockford. And she calls me up and I go, hey, babe, what's going on? She goes, hey, babe. she goes i just got uh the feds just left here i said what they want she said they gave me a subpoena to go down in front of this grand jury in peoria i think okay what's the date on it she told me the date on it i said okay she go i said i'll be out there to see you soon i said give me about a week later i'm gonna come out there and see you i said okay and she goes okay about 20 30 minutes later phone rings it's one of my other girlfriends she goes hey i say babe what's going on she goes ah the feds just left here i said what they want she goes i got a subpoena to go down in front of a grand jury in peoria i said you did huh i said what's the date on it she tells me the date on it i said okay i said i'm gonna be to see you she goes i'm not telling them anything i said i'm gonna be down to talk to you 30 minutes later an hour later or whatever it might have been get the phone call to one of my other girlfriends.

3:28:30And I go, hold on, let me guess. Did the feds just come and see you? She goes, how'd you know? I said, seems to be going around today. I said, grand jury in Peoria. And she goes, yeah. I go, what's the date? She tells me the date. I said, okay. So they went and subpoenaed all the girls that I had any dealings with through these years all at the same time and brought them all down in one room where they were setting to get ready to go into the grand jury. So I laugh about it now with Chris because it's so many years later, and I laugh about it, and I'm like, man, that was some dirty pool. And he'll laugh, and he'll tell you tomorrow.

3:29:10He goes, we were dying in there. He goes, you've seen the guys walking by the room and looking in, and they're like, what is going on in that room? Look at them. They're all stars in there. And he's like, yeah, they're all former strippers, and we should put a stripper pole up in there and stuff. Like, they're all Mel's girlfriends. And, you know, so when I had heard that and then went and talked to them, I went and seen all them girls. You know, I didn't want to get on the phone with them and seen all the girls. And I called my attorney up, and my good dear friend PJ was telling you about it.

3:29:38And I said, listen, this is what they just did. And he goes, wow. He goes, that doesn't make any sense. He goes, they must be at the bottom of the barrel if they're subpoenaing your girlfriends. because I know you ain't talking to them out of school. I'm like, listen, them girls know what I have for breakfast, and that's about it. I said, half of them never met any Hells Angels. I don't bring my stuff home. They don't know any crimes or businesses. I'm not sleeping with them telling them there are crimes that we're doing. Girls know nothing about me. And he goes, ah, it's weird. I go, what, at the bottom of the barrel here?

3:30:10This is their Rico case? Well, they already had. They knew they were getting the indictment. They just brought these girls down there, right, to rile them all up before they brought them in a room to see if they were going to be mad because they were all in there looking at each other now like uh so you know we call that the dirty pool trick these days you don't be being chris or laugh about it right and uh just crazy you know and i i i talked to them girls all still today you know i still remain friends with all of them you know a couple i didn't for a while that were mad at me the kendalls and stuff like that but uh you know i was able to go back in and later in life and say listen i i had apologized to him because it got heavy on my heart sean especially when i came home from the rico and now i gave the lord full surrender you know i say before i went gave him about 70 i wanted to keep my hand on the wheel with the you know with the girls and how i wanted to live life still right but then is now the rico had come right you know so they do all that with the girls now I know it's coming I remember the conversation with my mom and having dinner one day and because they subpoenaed my mom and dad too they went and subpoenaed my mom and dad because at first they thought I was trying to launder some money through them right because one of the Corvettes was in my in my mom's name one of the bikes was one of the bikes was in another girl's name I showed some income back then through a through a towing company that I was doing some, like overseeing some, like a consultant work for.

3:31:44But that guy just paid me in the check. I cashed the check and gave it back to him, the money. I didn't need his money, but he paid the taxes. So I showed some legal income, but not enough to facilitate the way I was living, right? So they subpoenaed my mom and dad to go down in front of the grand jury too. So I was at my mom's house talking to them. I said, yeah, they're going to end up getting this Rico on me, kicking my doors, and I'm going to set up in there with no bond in 15, 18 months until we either plead or go to trial. I go, I see this whole thing coming, and my Italian mother being this stern mother, and she said, you should have known that was coming.

3:32:25I mean, she didn't give me no sympathy like, oh, baby. She goes, you had to know that was coming, son. I said, I know, I know, I get it. I go, I'm just aggravated now because I know when they get this, I'm going to be sitting for a hot minute, right? And that's what happened. They ended up kicking my doors in that morning. And like I said, Chris didn't come to my house. The SWAT team came. And we'll laugh at this probably when we get together tomorrow. But in the morning, they kicked the doors. And I was with one of the girlfriends, with this girl, Kathy. and we heard the dogs barking next to her house at five something in the morning.

3:33:05I said, baby, your neighbor's got dogs? She goes, yeah, but they shouldn't be out. And I looked out the window and seen all the black trucks out in front of the house. And I said, ah, and I said, hey, get up, get up. I go, we're getting raided. And she goes, what's that? What's that? She had no idea because she wasn't with me through the Hells Angel days. This was when I was home from both prison sentences, and now I'm out of the club. I just started dating her a couple months before this. She ran a big hospital. She had a businesswoman and stuff, and I'm at her house. So I said, oh, my God. I said, give me something to wear.

3:33:44I didn't have no clothes on. I said, give me something. So I went to the top of her stairs. She had about eight or nine wooden stairs that went down. Beautiful home. Beautiful front wooden door. and I'm at the top of the stairs and she's down the hallway and I see all the red dots coming through the side window. They, bam, they bust out a side window because she had a big door and there was two glass windows. They bust out the side window. She throws me her robe. She's like a little tiny girl, 105 pounds. And she throws me a robe. I couldn't even get it on my forearm. I was 300 pounds. She throws me the robe.

3:34:20I got the robe in my hand and they're in there. Drop what's in your hand. Drop what's in your hand. I said, it's a robe. They said, drop what's in. I said, drop what's in the hand, right? So I'm like, Kathy, open up the door. Hurry up. Open up the door. I didn't want them to smash the door in at her nice house, right? So she flies down the stairs. She's got that robe in her hand. She's naked. She opens up the door. We laughed because all the agents told Chris, well, she was a superstar, right? They got to see that body. And she opens up the door. They grab her out. So they're all at the bottom of stairs gunned up it's pitch dark there's a night light on behind me but it's just dark right dark outside i got my hands up in the air i said i'm unarmed there's no weapons in this house it's just me and kathy in this house we're good you know they said turn around turn around so i turn around they said clap your hands together like this put your hands behind your head put you like that i said okay they said walk backwards down the stairs and i said oh no no no i'm not doing that.

3:35:15I said, I'm going to end up breaking my neck. I'm going to fall down these stairs. Being that big, I couldn't move like that. I said, I'm going to kneel at the top of the stairs. I knelt at the top of the stairs, kept my hands like this. And it felt like an eternity to where anybody came up and threw the cuffs on me. It felt like an eternity. I'm thinking to myself, what is going on? Are they going to come get me? Well, come to find out later, Chris tells me when we got to know each other, all them dudes got a case of homophobia. Nobody wanted to come up and throw some cuffs on me Start naked, right?

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3:37:03I'm not fucking doing it. Yeah, we're not doing it, right? So we laugh about that, right? And he told me that the guys told him, they're like, man, he looked like King Kong up there. They're like, he was up all these stairs. There was a light behind him. It was 300 pounds. All you've seen was all this muscle standing there. They're like, man, it looked crazy. And they're like, he was naked, you know? So they finally come and got me, you know, brought me, put me on the couch, handcuffed me and stuff. And the guy goes, hey, you got some clothes here? And I said, yeah, just go in the bedroom, you know, and there's some clothes in the closet.

3:37:31You'll see my clothes on the floor. So he got me some clothes and let me put some clothes on and stuff. and Kathy was outside and they said, hey, you mind if we search the house? And I said, let me ask you a question. I said, do you got a warrant for me or do you got a warrant for the house? And they said, we got a body warrant for you. I said, okay, there's nothing here, but I don't want you to search her house. I said, what is this for? And they said, it's for the RICO indictment. We're taking you down to Peoria. And I said, okay, can you get me out of here as quick as you can? I said, because I don't want her neighbors getting up and seeing all this.

3:38:03She's a businesswoman. and she had nothing to do with this when I was back in the day. I don't want to embarrass her in this neighborhood like this. Can you guys get me out of here fast? And they said, yeah, okay, come on. They brought her back in the house, and let me give her a kiss goodbye. And I told her, I whispered in her ear, I said, go call my mother. And I said, and let my mom know what's going on. She was close with my mom. I said, go to my mom's, let my mom know what's going on. And that morning, my daughter was meeting me for breakfast. so now my daughter's 16 17 years old and i made a promise to my daughter danielle that

3:38:43that i was never going back to the penitentiary i said d i'm not going back i'm changing my life i'm done with this club stuff i'm done with the misdeeds i was doing i never blamed the club for my stuff that was me i was the individual nobody held my put a gun to my head to do all that stuff right I said I'm not going back changing my life I'm gonna we're gonna concentrate and be a family so she was meeting me that morning at our favorite breakfast spot and she was there because now they got me out of there well they couldn't we know they had we had a three-hour ride to Peoria they didn't let Kathy go right away they kept her in the house until the sunset came up and everything like that so now my daughter's at the breakfast place at 8 a.m.

3:39:25Kathy goes to my mom's house and And my mom calls my daughter up and says, Danielle, you need to get over to the house. She goes, well, I'm meeting my dad. My dad's getting ready to walk in from breakfast. And she's like, they came and took your dad. So that was a heartbreaking thing there. And when I talked to her on the phone, I called later that night after we got arraigned. And she was at the house and I talked to her on the phone and I said, Danielle. And she said, Dad, you told me. And I said, I know I told you. I said, but this is for the past. I didn't commit no new crimes. I said, this is all from the past.

3:40:04I said, my last predicate act on this RICO indictment was 1998. And, you know, I said, I'm paying for the past, Danielle. I said, but I promise you, I'm going to come home one day, and this is all behind me. And I explained it to her, like I'm paying my penance for the past, you know. And we're like this to this day, you know what I mean? But that was the hardest thing to tell her that, you know, you promised me. Damn. Yeah. That hit the hardest with me. So, you know, now it's great because I got two grand girls from her and, you know, and we're as tight as could be. My daughter is a big believer and she's out here in Tennessee.

3:40:44And I just have a great, her and my wife, Melissa. And, you know, it's just we have the best relationship with that. So I just thank God for that. And that was my cleansing, John. And that was me giving that full surrender. I'm telling you, after we got that indictment and there was no bond, and now it's February of 2005, I'm sitting in this cold cell, and the marshals still are believing that I'm the Hell's Angel leader, even though I'm out of the club. And all they know is what they know, right? And just like when the SWAT team came in, they came in, And they were all pumped up, sitting in the local precinct for the previous three hours, coming in to get me, thinking that they might have a shootout, right?

3:41:28So everybody was still thinking I was that old guy, you know? And I remember just getting down on my knees in that cell, and I was like, okay, Lord. I thought this was all behind me. I thought, you know, me and you had this relationship going on. And I said, but I felt this heaviness on my heart, and that's what came up on my heart, the women. And I said, okay, I see. I didn't give you that full surrender. Because when I told him, take the wheel of my life, I'm going to sit in the passenger seat. Well, I sat in the passenger seat, but every once in a while I grabbed the wheel and I wanted to run back to the strip clubs and all the women again.

3:42:06Christ wasn't going there with me, right? So he was like, you want the wheel? Take the wheel. So in that cell is where I really felt him speak to me. And I tell everybody, I didn't hear his voice. I just felt it upon my heart. And that's where I told him, I don't know what I'm looking at. 20 plus years if things don't go right, but I'm dependent on you and I'm going to give you full surrender. And that women thing kept coming up on my heart and I said, I'm done. When I come home, you are guiding my life from that point on. And I got so deep into the word now, even though I was into the word before, now I was into it with a clarity.

3:42:43I was understanding what the word meant because now I was giving him my heart. I wasn't saying, get me out of here tomorrow, Lord. I didn't get the keys the next day. I ended up doing that 49 months, right? But in total peace. I remember I was taking a nap, and one of the sellies I had before I even pled, you know, this is probably six, seven months into it. I didn't plead later. I didn't plead. It had to be 14, 15 months until we finally all pled, you know. We were just looking over the case and sitting down with our attorneys. You know, the feds take their time. In the cell, he said to me, man, wow, that's some peace, huh?

3:43:22And I go, what are you talking about? He goes, you're able to take naps and relax, and you're looking at this RICO trial or this RICO case you got going on? And I told him, yeah, I'm just giving it up to the Lord, man. And I used to pray and say, Lord, whatever you need me to do, I'm here. You know, if you don't need me here for 20 years eating ramen noodles and honey buns, I would appreciate that. But your will. And I'm here, and I'm okay with it. and I had a peace that was just deep, Sean. It was deep in me. I was peaceful. Not to say that I didn't have no days where I was looking at this. I mean, my lawyer went through some ups and downs with me.

3:44:00There was a couple of times he came to see me and I was like, F these guys. I'm tired of it. My criminal history is, I'm not pleading guilty and they're going to give me 18 years anyways. Screw that. We might as well go to trial. And I would get, my lawyer would have to talk me off the ledge. Relax, relax. So I didn't just, it wasn't just they flipped the switch. I got the key the next day. I battled it. But I always came back to the Lord and said, you got me, you got me on this, you got me on this. And then once I pled and got the time, and then I was off to the federal penitentiaries, I was doing some Bible studies with some hardcore dudes in there that told me to my face, we would have never walked in to a Bible study and talked about the Lord if it wasn't for you, Mel.

3:44:46And I meet some hard dudes. Came in there because they said, we wanted to know why you walk around here smiling, peaceful. That's what got their attention? That's what got their attention. They said, you always talking about the Lord and what the Lord did in your life. Then we got to hear what kind of dude you were. Because when you're in a federal penitentiary, there's guys from all over the United States in there. All over. And some of them got to hear some old Mel stories, some road stories. And they were like, wait a minute, this dude that's in here right now, that dude you're telling me about is in here running a bio study.

3:45:22Well, he wasn't back in the day, boys. Well, he is now. And then they'd come and talk to me. Hey, so-and-so, one of my guys knew you from the street or was in this club or this mobster knew you from this and said, you are not a good dude. I said, well, here's where I am. And it's only by the grace of God that I am able to be here and doing this. And it was only by his grace that he protected me through all that. how come i'm not a tombstone on somebody's chest or arm you know i was the poster child to that lifestyle right i shouldn't be here with you i think about that all the time especially when i'm you know my wife reminds me about a lot of stuff you know i'll be in traffic and we'll be in florida and i'll be like ah the snowbirds are here this traffic sucks and she's like yeah it beats sitting in an eight by ten right and i'm like it beats sitting in an eight by ten i keep my federal ID in one of my drawers in my kitchen.

3:46:17Whenever I'm not grateful, I look at that and say, thank you, Lord. You know? How was it reconnected with your daughter? How long were you in there? How old was I? How long were you in? Was it four years? Yeah. 49 months, you said? 49 months, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, about four years. Yeah, you're just shy of it. So then reconnecting with her, you know, I always talked to her in there. When I went off to federal prison, I didn't want nobody to come in to see me. I just wanted to do that time. I wasn't close to home. I just was like, I just, I'll talk to everybody on the phone. Now, much later in life, my dad was very sick.

3:47:02As a diabetic, he was sick. And my mom used to tell me, she's like, you know, Papa's not doing good. and I'd say I know and I'd pray Lord please please let me come home that's my only prayer let me come home and spend some time with my dad because I was I was the apple of my dad's eye baseball coach you know even though I was doing what I was doing he still loved me he still loved the fellas the fellas that I'll come over and see my parents I told you he loved all the fellas individually they just didn't like what we were about and um that was my prayer and I made it home and my dad passed eight months later.

3:47:38So my dad got to see that life change. Because when I came home, I said, okay, I'm done. Everything that I committed a crime, they got me for. There's no skeletons. There's nothing I can't talk about. I paid the penance. I'm done. I'm never going back to that lifestyle. I'm getting on my way. The only thing that I wish could happen, I wish my dad could have met Melissa, my now wife, because my mom got to, because my dad passed in 08 and I I moved Melissa from Florida to Chicago in 09. I made her come up there because my dad passed and I was back living in the childhood home I had. Are you serious?

3:48:14Yes. Wow. So my dad passed, Sean, and my mom has been with my dad forever, since they've been kids. And now my mom was afraid to stay in the house because she's never been alone. And I said, well, I wasn't with Melissa yet. I was with another girl. I was dating, you know, when I came home from the Rico and I said, her name was Leslie, and I said, listen, I got to go back and uh i'm going back in a movement with my mother so i was the 41 year old dude living in my mom's basement that i grew up in but with a career you know i was already running all the nightclub stuff you know um but i told my mom i'm not gonna let you stay alone in this house you know i'm gonna stay in this house with you so when i met melissa and then i told her if you want to be in a relationship with me you i you have to move to chicago and her mom and dad were in florida I said I can't move down here and my mom's not moving down here and I'm not leaving my mom my mom and dad took care of me the whole time I was in the penitentiary you know physically you know financially I I didn't need that when I was in there I still had some money I said but they were there with me my whole life and I'm not leaving my mom alone I'm staying with my mom in the house you know so um you know I was blessed to see so my mom of course you know got got to meet Melissa in 09 and then my mom passed in 2019 they were best of friends Melissa we moved my mom to Florida in 2015 yeah she was there four years so 2015 we moved her to Florida and that girl out there took care of my mother like it was her own you know at the end you know my mom's health started fading out on her and stuff like that and then she just passed you know the Lord babied her home I say all the time Sean because she was such a believer such a believer and loved the Lord so you know I was blessed that I got that time but yeah that was that was my prayer when I was away just to get home so so reconnecting after I came home from the Rico now I had my dad I had my mom I had my daughter who's now older and my daughter had birthed to my first grandbaby Michaela two or three months before I came home.

3:50:20And I got a funny story. So when my daughter got pregnant by the guy she was with, who, you know, I knew who he was, and they've been together. They were together, like, from the time they were 15 or 16. Now she was, like, 20. My dear friend Jamie was bringing her down to see me in this facility. I was about two hours from the house. So she drops it to Jamie as we're going down there. She goes, Jamie, I got to tell you something. She goes, I'm pregnant. And she goes, I'm going to tell my dad today. And he goes, what? He pulls the car over to the side of the road. Jamie goes, I pulled the car over to the side and said, you're going to tell him when you're with me?

3:51:02It's like my dear friend.

3:51:07And she goes, yeah, I'm going to tell him today because I get to sit in the room with him in the visiting room with him. He goes, oh, Lord. He goes, he's going to lose his shit in there. And she goes, well, who better to be with than you, Uncle Jamie? He's like, oh, man. He goes, I was praying all the way there, Mel, you know? So she told me in the visiting, in the room, they had a little room set up. It was just me, her, and Jamie. And, of course, I did at first. I'm like, what? So what are you thinking? I said, I'm here locked up. I can't help you out. What are you thinking, you know? And, you know, then it took me a minute to think, like, okay, this ain't a bad thing here.

3:51:41So I came home, and my oldest granddaughter was just a few months old. And so now I'm home fresh home and I have a new little grandbaby that I have a new vision for. And I just became the apple of my eye. And I remember my daughter saying, geez, dad, you weren't like this with me. And I'm like, yeah, look what your dad was doing when you were four. And you were that age. By the time you were five, I was already gone doing all this stuff. Your dad wanted to be a gangster, I guess. Right. So, you know, and it's just amazing now. I said I got them two grandbabies, 19 and soon to be 12. and the apple of my eye.

3:52:16So, you know, coming home and reconnecting and doing all that. And I came back home to run the nightclubs again, Sean, when I got out of the Rico. My buddy had all them nightclubs and he said, Mel, you coming back home? And I said, yeah, I'm coming back home. I don't know what else to do. What am I going to do? Now I'm older. I'm not going to go pour concrete. And, you know, my body's aching a little bit as I'm older now. You know, I was 41, I think, when I came home from that. 41 when I came home from the Rico. I said, I'll be down there, Frankie. And I went down there and did the same thing, had the security team and did that, you know, for the next few years.

3:52:52You know, I think I got out of that like 2012. We moved to Florida in 2014, but 2012, I just couldn't take them late night hours no more, Sean, you know. And, uh, and I was like, I'm done with this stuff, you know, and, uh, went to Florida. And then, um, you know, as you know, as I, I hooked up with a gentleman by the name of Jim Mannion who owns the IFBB, the NPC, the Bodybuilding Federation. I hooked up with Jim. I met him when I came home. I met him in 09. I knew of him, of course, right? I was a bodybuilding fan flipping the magazines and Jim owning the Federation. And I always looked up to the Doreen Yates's and the Branch Warren's and the Lee Haney's and stuff like that, the Mr.

3:53:33Olympia's. And met a dear friend of mine now, Steve Weinberger, who owns Bev's Gym. He's one of our head judges for the for the federation and just got close to these guys talking to these guys and uh didn't want a job out of them didn't want anything out of them just it was it was great great to meet them and we just connected and stayed in touch with each other jim's in pittsburgh steve's in long island i was in chicago and um uh that's how i got it ended up hooking up with jim and to start working for him and once i moved to florida in 2014 and he said why don't you come aboard with us man now we all we love you we get along with you and we're all dear friends and and uh and gave me my first sanction to throw my first bodybuilding show which now we have three me and the wife have three april august and uh in december we just had to we we set our uh april 4th show over the easter weekend so that's how i got into the ifbb and the npc and uh and and in my first really legal legal career jobs, as I say, you know.

3:54:36I always say it was, I waited until I was 40 to get my first credit card and my first job.

3:54:44That's wild. Wild, huh, Sean? I mean, so what is it when you say completely surrendered, let Jesus take the will of me, what does that mean? Glad you asked that because, you know, me following you and, you know, it's no coincidence that I'm here and we're going to talk about that, you know, and I, you know, the podcast, you know, you're the one that I said, I'd love to be on Sean's show. And of course, the military, you know, as we'll get into what I do with Core Medical and what we do, we love our military. You being a believer and watching the people that you have coming on the show and seeing them talking to you and I see how deep you are.

3:55:25I watch you ask these questions, you know, I see some podcast people and they, you know, you almost got to, it don't even seem like they're following the conversation, but you go, wow, wait a minute, tell me. And I'm watching that, you know, and I seen that and that, that full surrender is for me was.

3:55:47Not asking for things my way. Not worrying about what's happening tomorrow. Just know that I'm in the moment and you have me, Lord. I'm giving you that full surrender. I'm going to know your word. The Bible that you left us, the word that you left us with, that is the truth of life. I want to know that. And I'm not going to go say, you know what, Lord, I want to go run and do this. I want to go do this career. I want to do this career. I pray on everything. I mean, I don't pray on what meals I'm having for the day, but I pray on everything. If this was the right fit for the show, I prayed on before I said yes with Dwayne doing the movie.

3:56:26Where do your answers come? How do they come to you? On my heart. I'll give you an example. Talking about the movie thing. So I come home from prison. It's around 2010. I get a call from a book company, a publishing company. Hey, Mel, we want to do your life story in a book. Oh, you do, huh? Yeah. $100 ,000 signing bonus,$2 a book, make this thing a bestseller, boom, boom, boom. Okay. Let me pray on it. Let me think about it and get back to you guys. Praying on it, praying on it. No interest, Sean. Nothing even sparking me. I didn't even want to call him back. Wasn't for the wife. I wouldn't even return the phone calls.

3:57:07But she's like, babe, give him a phone call and tell him no. They're calling you up, you know? So I said, okay. um so stuff like that i was praying on that and it was never coming back up upon my heart to where it came to fruition just was like yeah i'm not interested in that but i i asked i see i seeked him first like the like the word tells us seek first the kingdom and all will fall into place if you're seeking if you're seeking with an open heart it was this the right thing to do for me. Next year, book company again. Want to do your life story? Okay. Let them fly in and see what they're talking about.

3:57:44Okay. I let the fly in and see what they're talking about. I'm praying on it, praying on it. I have no interest in it, but I let the team come down to Florida to see if I was interested. What do they want to talk about? They don't care about the redemption. They don't care about my walk with the Lord. They just want to talk about all the biker stuff. So that was very easy. As soon as they told me all that, I said, we're good guys. Wasn't interested in doing this anyway. Sorry, I wasted your tripping, but we're good. Oh, well, let's, no, no, no, no, we're good. Too late now, you got me not interested, right?

3:58:15So that is what I, how I know he speaks to me. I pray on everything, you know, and, you know, it just, I feel it. I feel it. He doesn't come in, I don't hear him say, well, Mel, you know, we don't, you know, his voice don't come, he's not burning in a bush. He's just putting it on my heart. and he brings, you know, he opens the doors for me and tells me, hey, this is a fit for you. I want you to go here. I'm praying on it. Okay. You know, just like when, you know, when I hooked up with, with, with Sid, who you met, you know, who gave you the gun, you know, and I didn't wanted really job at the time then either.

3:58:51You know, this was 2018. I was already doing my bodybuilding stuff and I was content with that income. I was living nice. I was in Florida, But I prayed on it. And I said, okay, Lord, if this is where you want me, if this is a fit, then you'll make it happen. I won't have to go to, I won't have to push through it. I won't have to try to put the round ball into the square peg, you know. It'll just, you'll make it happen. And boy, he did. And not only did I gain a partner out of it, I gained a little brother out of the deal and a family, you know. So that's what I tell everybody. I pray and everything.

3:59:25People go, everything? I said no not what I'm having for breakfast and not what sandwich I just ordered but I pray in anything that has some substance you know the movie deal the bodybuilding career to you know where I'm at in life I pray on it all sitting here right now you know you know who who this my prayer is for for this show that uh you know that people would see me and you here together and, you know, as two believers and two followers of Christ and that people would see from my story that nobody's too far gone from the love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ because, geez, look where I was.

4:00:04I mean, Christ couldn't fellowship with me back in them days. He had to turn away from me when I was doing all that. He can't be part of that and live in that sin-filled life I was running around. But he got me. He got my attention. and if he can do it for someone like me that was running that gamut you know i talked to a lot of people in life a lot of uh first responders a lot of military people and stuff and people say man mel what a life you lived on i'm like yeah but look at what god did for my life i wasn't calling out to him i wasn't saying forgive me lord for all this bad stuff i'm doing i couldn't wait to go do more bad stuff you know so that full surrender is I truly understand what that means and I don't make a move without being in prayer and letting him guide me first and look how it worked out if I would have did them books back in the day we wouldn't be talking about a movie story right now because the story would have been told and not by Dwayne Johnson and John Bernthal and seven buck productions.

4:01:08It would have been told already. And maybe somebody would have jumped on that book offer and that money. 100 grand to a guy like me is a lot of money. But it wasn't on my heart, and I don't do anything that I don't feel as far as that I pray on. Prayed on my marriage. Is this the right girl for me? And boy, 16 years later, I'm lucky I can breathe air without. I mean, I don't know where we bank. I don't know what's in the bank. And that's the truth, Sean. She does it all. I know that this card in my pocket works when I go to a lunch. You know what I mean? I know, you know, but I don't let, she runs everything.

4:01:47My bodybuilding stuff, I show up and do what I do. She runs everything from, you know, setting up the convention centers to the athletes' check-ins to the medals to all that, the stages and everything. Little Mel does all that. and I just do what I do. So, you know, I prayed on it and I know she's part of the team. The Lord brought me an amazing woman in my life. And I'm very thankful and grateful. You know, I don't take that for granted at all. You know, and if I do, I told you what I do. I get either her knocking me in the head or I remember them, them 8x10s, you know. You know, it's interesting out there.

4:02:27You said how many former, maybe you didn't say former, people in the biker community biker gang one percent community that are reaching out to you yeah about coming to jesus yeah sean it's it's how's that feel it feels amazing after they seen me on john berthell a few years ago and telling the story you know i started getting these dms and i would look at the person's page and i was like this guy's got a a vest on from this club, from this club. He's still active. And then we would DM a little bit and I would say to them, you know, so too much to DM here. Here's my number. Give me a call. And they give me a call and I'll talk to him.

4:03:10And one of the guys, and I can mention his name. He was a former pagan, Sergeant of Arms for the pagan back in the day for the pagans. Tough dude. He's like my brother these days. His name is Tony. And, uh, he was, you know, a non-believer, Sean, a non-believer. and was scrolling through YouTube. Love is John as an actor and sees John and he goes, from Hell's Henchmen to Hell's Angels to God. And he sees me on the thing and he goes, ah, I'm not watching this idiot. You know, he's a former, you know what I'm saying? Our former enemy, blah, blah, blah. Even though he was from Pennsylvania, I didn't know him personally, but them clubs didn't get along.

4:03:52Yeah, it wasn't, or the Hell's Angels and the Pagans. Doesn't watch it. Says a couple days later, pops up in his feed again. He's like, two hours and 30 minutes. I'm not watching this thing for two hours and 30 minutes. Beat it, right? Kicked it, kicked it to the curb again. One night he said he woke up, two, three o 'clock in the morning, popped up on his feed. Said, let me see what this bozo's talking about. And he said, as he's watching it, he said, I couldn't stop it and put it down, Mel. He said, and all of a sudden I feel this thing coming out of my eye that I didn't know what it was. It was a tear.

4:04:29This dude didn't cry. He goes, and I'm like listening to you talk about the Lord. And he goes, and I had this, I felt like somebody was standing on my chest. And then he reached out to me, Sean, in a DM on Facebook. And he told me that he watched my thing and he told me who he was. And he said, you know, I don't know what to take of this. and I said, well, Tony, here's my number. Give me a call. And we started talking and fellowshipping with each other and he gave his life to Christ. And he's an amazing member of the John 316 devotional team and I mean a strong believer. And I told him, I said, Tony, I'm definitely going to talk about you on this podcast with Sean because it's just by the grace of God that me and you are in each other's lives.

4:05:17He's been at my house, sleeping in my house with me and little Mel there, you know, and just hanging out, you know. And the first time he came, and he's a big dude, and Melissa says, are we okay here? Babies, you didn't want to put him up at a hotel? I said, no, I want him to stay here. I said, I've been talking to this guy for a year already on the phone. The Lord's directing him here. He's going to stay here. He's like a brother to us now. That's awesome. He's one example. So, you know, I know that they're not coming for the attraction for me or, hey, we like this dude's hair or whatever. They're getting led by the spirit.

4:05:56And then they hear my story and something's touching them to touch a guy like that deep down like that, you know. And, you know, it's just so cool to see. And now, all these years later, I see every walk of life that reaches out to me and says, hey, we've seen this podcast or we've seen you with the Core Medical Podcast, and we heard you're always talking about the Lord. Your faith is always out there, first and foremost. So I'm not ashamed of my faith, and I'm never going to hide it, no matter where I'm at. And people are like, man, we want to know that. We want to become a strong believer. I'll go back to Terry Bolle, Hulk Hogan.

4:06:36The reason that he asked me to do that at that time, because he wasn't in that spot at that time. Yeah, you've seen he got baptized. You've seen him on Joe Rogan, and he wore one of these shirts here. But that was later. Six years ago, when he asked me to read that Jesus Calling, he was still running around in the Hollywood scene in the limelight. Even though he believed in the Lord, he was like, it's not for me to put out. You know, some people don't want to put that out there, right? And that's where he was at at that time. And that's why he asked me to do it, and I did it. And, you know, he wasn't there.

4:07:15But through them years of me and him being tight and fellowshipping with each other, and he used to always say, What do you mean, Mel, they'll know you by your fruits? And I'd explain the Bible to him. What do you mean full surrender? Well, I'd known you 30-something years. I'd known you when you were at the worst of the worst. He used to come and see us in the wrestling matches and put your vest on and 300 pounds. And them dudes used to be like, damn, Terry. That guy's the real deal, huh? And Terry would go, he's the real deal, boys. But he's my friend, and we're very close. And Mel's a gentleman, and I'd leave him with my kids.

4:07:49But on the flip side of the coin, Mel's out doing what he does. So I watched his faith grow to where he got baptized. And then he wasn't ashamed of his faith no more. Now he's wearing the John 316 devotional team t-shirts. He goes on Joe Rogan. I didn't know he was going on Joe. I was busy. I didn't talk to him for like 10 days because I was running around getting busy with work. And I get a call from some people and they're like, did you see this episode? And I said, no. And they show me the thing he's in the shirt. And they talk about me on the show and show when I rode around the ring with the Hells Angels when we came riding around the ring and stuff like that with him and stuff.

4:08:28And here he is talking to Joe about his belief. And I'm sitting back watching Joe, who I don't know, who I know he wasn't a believer back in the day, right? And watching him talk to Terry about their beliefs. And I'm watching Terry put it out there. And Mel's telling me about this full surrender. And I watched a mean, violent guy go from what he went to to this. And they're watching it around the ring. And Joe's like, wow. And I'm just watching it like, wow. That's cool, man. Right? No coincidence. Some young boy from LSUP who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago is putting these people in my life to do what's going on in my life.

4:09:13Yeah. When you run a business, you track every dollar. And your bank shouldn't make that harder or hold you back. Chime is changing the way people bank by offering the most rewarding, fee-free banking. It's built for you, not like these old banks, no overdraft fees, no monthly fees, and access to thousands of fee-free ATMs. With Chime, you can get up to$1 ,150 in annual rewards fee-free. You get 5 % cash back on your Chime card in a category of your choice, like gas or groceries. Your savings grow faster with a 3.75 % APY. That's nine times higher than the national average. You also get premium travel perks like airport lounge access and a 24-7 concierge and access up to$500 of your pay early with my pay.

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4:11:20We pray, we lift up, you know, probably about 20 people every morning. I cut it down to 20 people ask me to, you know, I got a list for the rest of the week. You know, can you lift up Eileen? Can you lift up Sean? Can you lift up the Ryan family? And I tell everybody, we don't need to know the circumstances. Just give us the first name or the family's last name. We're going to lift them up. God knows why we're lifting them up. And we're going to intercede for these people. and we do that. So I still read Sarah Young, Jesus Calling, morning and night because there's a nighttime devotion. I don't read that for the social media and for the team.

4:11:53I read that for myself. And I believe that, you know, and listen, she took that from the Bible. I read some things about her like, oh, she's trying to interpret the word of the Lord. But how she breaks that down, that story down. I've heard the same comments. I don't give a shit what those people say. Right, bro. Me either. It does good for me. Half the time I read it, I think it's talking about me. Amen, bro. I'm like, holy shit. I used to read it at the end of the day. Now I read it in the morning. I might go back to the end of the day because a lot of times when I read it at the end of the day and I reflect back on the day, I'm like, that was my fucking day.

4:12:33That was it, right? You know, and this month is all about, I think they do, I think they have themes every month. I've had this for two years. I didn't read it every day last year. It's like, I put it down for a month or two and then pick it up. And this year I've only missed a couple of days. Yeah. But what I'm noticing is in the, each month seems to have a theme. Yeah. And this month, I believe, is all about surrendering. I'm trying to think of what this morning was. I mean, we've been going here for some time. I'll read it. Let's go get it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

4:13:20It definitely speaks to you. And she took it, you know, right out of the Bible, the passages. They're at the bottom. What is today? The 14th? Today's the 14th. Yeah. Yeah, the 14th. It's a long one. Heaven is both present and future. As you walk along your life path holding my hand, you are already in touch with the essence of heaven, nearness to me. You can also find many hints of heaven along your pathway because earth is radiantly alive with my presence. Shimmering sunshine awakens your heart, gently reminding you of my brilliant light. Birds and flowers, trees and skies evoke praises to my holy name.

4:14:06Keep your eyes and ears fully open as you journey with me. At the end of your life path is an entrance to heaven. Only I know when you will reach that destination, but I am preparing you for it each step of the way. The absolute certainty of your heavenly home gives you peace and joy to help you along your journey. You know that you will reach your home in my perfect timing. Not one moment too soon or too late. Let the hope of heaven encourage you as you walk along the path of life with me. And Sean, what are the passages underneath there? I know they're written. It says Corinthians 15, 20 through 23, Hebrews 6, 9.

4:14:48Yes. So then passages back up what Sarah wrote in the story, right? And not a moment too soon and not a moment too late. You know, is this one about surrendering? It's more about living in the moment. Yeah, and trusting the Lord, yeah.

4:15:11Anyway, so when it comes to surrendering, I think I've talked to just about everybody about this, so I'm just interested in your take. Yeah. But I don't know what that means. So there's this, actually, for the past two months, it's been be in the moment, be in the now, quit worrying about the past, quit worrying about the future. I've got the past thing ironed out. Took me a long time. Yeah. But I don't think about any of that shit anymore. Yeah. And, but the future, like, I'm always thinking about the future. Yeah. I'm always thinking about how am I going to hit my financial goals? What's the next vacation I'm going to take my son on for a father and son trip?

4:16:02What are we, you know, how am I going to, just all the shit in life, you know, all the responsibilities all the expectations that you need to live up to all the fears all the all of the you know maybe it is you just shouldn't live an ambitious life well i mean i think living an ambitious life is what takes you out of the moment and makes you want to, I mean, aspirations of success. I mean, do you know what I mean? Yeah. All that stuff makes you think about what you need to prepare to get to the point that you want to be at. Sure. But if you don't live an ambitious life, then you won't. Maybe you'll be in the moment.

4:16:55I don't know. Yeah. I live an ambitious life. I think I know what you're talking about. a lot of goals i have a lot of business goals family goals financial goals every i have a lot of goals i just i'm a very goal orientated person nothing wrong with that maybe there is though because that takes away from what really matters which is my son my wife my daughter the people that i love what do you think well the word tells us this for what can worrying about tomorrow you You can't change a single hair on your head, right? Stay in the moment, stay in today. What is it doing you good worrying about tomorrow?

4:17:30I'm not saying that we're doing that when we worry. I don't worry about the future. Do I think of some nice things and want to take care of my granddaughters and being successful and having a business and being able to make some money to support that? Sure, I don't think there's nothing wrong with that, but I don't dwell on that. And I don't think like the Internet says I'm worth$5 million. Far from it. But I don't say, I want to reach that goal. I need to get that. I need to go get this new job. Or I need to work, work, work, work. Where I'm taking myself out of today. The Bible tells us be in the moment.

4:18:08The Lord is going to meet us right where we're at. Don't worry about tomorrow. Look at the birds of the air. They don't store. They don't sow. They just, and God takes care of them. how much more valuable are we as his children and he is going to take care of that for us and i don't think that means go be lazy and don't get off your couch and don't have i'm not i'm not saying that means to be lazy i don't i don't you know i used to be judgmental of people that are not ambitious yeah not so much anymore right you know they get a lot more time than i do with their kids with their wife with doing fucking hobbies and i don't even know what i don't have any hobbies yeah i have no hobbies i work and i spend time with my kids and my wife and that's that's about it yeah and i mean you're successful and but i your relationship with the lord and i i don't you know can't comment on that but i think when you're in that fellowship with him and you're saying your will be done not mine not i want to have that five million internets telling me about or nothing like that your will if this movie goes it sure will i'm meant to be on sean ryan you i was praying about it you'll make it happen and then look at what comes the team calls me and says hey everybody's all these podcasters are calling boom boom boom and i said okay and you know i was praying on that Not long before we came up and picked you, right?

4:19:46So I think in that, seek first him, Sean, right? Seek first him. And he's going to, you know, he knows. He blessed you with that family. Blessed you with your wife and your boy. He's not, we want you to have all that time, but also want you to be able to take care of them, right? I don't think you'd be sitting here doing this right now if it wasn't in his wheelhouse. You're a believer. I know you pray. I know you have a fellowship with him. and uh and and he's gonna move you around for that season i never thought i would leave the club i was the the poster child right and uh but for a season he brought me and brought me in different places you know and i see what he's what he's um using me for now i'm being a vessel for him now to reach some of the hardest of hearts right some of the guys that um I love Tim Tebow.

4:20:42I didn't know him through his sports days because I didn't follow sports, but I love what he does for the kingdom. And sometimes I'll be sitting home in my pool or on the beach when I'm not traveling and I'll be like, man, Tim's not sitting at home right now. He's got multiple things that he's doing. He's got charities. He's doing this. He's doing that. Then I got to get out of my own head. And then my 40 something year friend will tell me, Pastor Steve will say, Tim Tebow is not reaching the dudes that you're reaching. and vice versa. We all have a part we are doing for the kingdom, right? And so I had to get used to that.

4:21:16Like, okay, you got me in this pool today. Lord, you got me some days off that I'm spending with my wife and my mom when she was living and my friends and the Sidneys in my life and the Chris's in my life, you know? Because I sure could be go, go, go. There's a lot of business opportunities that come to the plate for me now, real legit ones where I could be making crazy, crazy money, but it's never, I never get pulled down that road. I'm always, I thank him for my daily bread. The blessings we have that we are sitting at right now, riffs over our head families, you know, the blessings of that.

4:21:54I think that's when we talk about that full surrender you're asking about is where you say that your will be done. And we can't go say, okay, I want to make another million dollars. So I got to go do this other venture. You know, if the Lord wants you there, because you're going to do, he's going to do something with that, that, that flow of money. He's going to put it on your heart and bring you there. As long as you're seeking them first, that's that full surrender. And it's funny you said that because Terry used to say that all the time. Hulk used to ask me about that. He's like, explain that to me.

4:22:26What do you mean by they'll know you buy your fruits? And I'm like, you can, I can say I'm the biggest believer in the world, but I can tell somebody, hey, come pick me up. I'm at the dollhouse right now with these strippers doing a line of cocaine. They're going to know you by your fruits. I'm not doing that stuff. I don't dip my toe in the pool, as I say, right, in the full surrender. And as long as you're, he's going to guide you. The Holy Spirit is not going to let you get off into some venture that's going to ruin your relationship with the Lord. We're believers. The Bible tells us, when you call upon the name of the Lord, you shall be saved.

4:23:05Not if you go take this venture, or you do this, or you don't do that. He's got us, and He's going to guide us. We just have to be faithful and to know He's bringing us where He wants us. Do you ever go back to the Catholic Church at all? No, I haven't been in a Catholic church in, well, 20-something plus years. And I'm nothing against the Catholics, nothing against them at all. I don't judge anybody's relationship with the Lord. But I believe in the Bible, the word that Christ left us with, right? And we see a picture over here on the wall here, and it's... You know what that is? Yes. It's all the...

4:23:4462 ,000-something cross-references. Yes, from where the Bible references from the Old Testament to the New Testament. And I seen that when I walked in and that's how many times and there's just you just can't replicate that. Like Jeremiah said here when he had the shroud, you could never make that happen again with any kind of digital laser prints or whatever. Right. There's certain things that cannot be unexplained. Right. And, you know, I think when we think about that and we fellowship and when we believe and we say, you got us, I'm not worrying about tomorrow. You have my tomorrows. We can't change tomorrow, you know, but we know who does, who's on the throne and who's holding it.

4:24:30And, you know, and it brings us back to the word, your will be done. Give us to stay our daily bread, our daily bread. I'm eating food. He provides our provisions. We have a home over our heads and everything. He gives us what we need. What if Mel Chansey couldn't be faithful with$5 million? What if you put$5 million in my bank account or he didn't? What if I got$5 million in my bank account now? I didn't need him no more. You know, there's a... I do see that a lot. Through this show, I am affiliated with some insane wealth. It's crazy. People with some insane wealth. and and they're not it's weird you know i think it's like people hit a certain whatever it is in their head certain amount of wealth they've got yeah i swear i think they become their own god they they think they become their own god or they yeah you know i pay attention to this shit yeah they don't need them like proverbs says don't give me too little that I would have to steal to eat and defame your name, Lord.

4:25:40Don't give me too much that I would forget about you because I don't need you. Give to me my daily bread. And I am comfortable with that. And again, to go back and not saying that, I'm blessed that I have two amazing careers. core medical my bodybuilding world this movie thing coming up i am blessed for that but you know he gives me what he knows i can handle and be a steward for and and i wouldn't want that if it was going to take him away me away from him not him away from me me away from him i wouldn't want that i will just be comfortable right where i'm at so i lived in an 8x10 for a long time the 2 ,000 square foot home I have in Florida with the lanai in the pools like Taj Mahal to me.

4:26:30And I thank him for that every day. I say, thank you for, wow, I never thought I would be here in life. I got the white vinyl fence, everything I didn't want, you provided for me in my life. So that surrender is something that you're doing already. You know, you're giving it up to him and seeking him first. You know, you get up every day, your fellowship. And people ask me, how many times a day you pray? I say, I can't count that. I don't get out of prayer. The only time I end a prayer is in Jesus' name I pray. We pray as if we're praying together. I'm praying out loud for somebody. I'm walking with them in fellowship and with them all the time.

4:27:01I'm in meetings on the phones and not everybody got the memo. Not everybody's a believer. I call the believer in getting the memo. I'm on the phone dealing with different chairmen from around the country for the bodybuilding industry. Me and Sidney dealing with different people and sometimes these guys are on the other end getting jazzy a little bit. And my mind's going back to, man, I'd like to run into you right now. with a ball peeing hammer, you know? And I have to center myself. I have to say, Lord, thank you. You didn't bring me this far for me to go screw this up right here. You know, you take this situation.

4:27:37You handle this for me, Lord. You know, a lot of times, I was sitting in this meeting one time, Sean, and it was all these big money guys. They were talking to me about a business, and they said, Hey, Mel, let me ask you a question. They go, you know, you got a CFO? and I go, what? And they go, CFO. And I'm like, oh man, I don't know what that means. And there's like eight, nine people in this room and I'm like, I'm starting to sweat and everything. I'm like, I gotta, I gotta be honest with them. I said, no, I go, guys, I don't know what a CFO is. Can you tell me what that is? And they go, yeah, like a chief financial officer, somebody that takes care of your finances.

4:28:13And I go, yeah, I got one. I go, Jesus Christ. And they all looked at each other, men and women. Right. And they're like, okay and i go that's my cfo i said he brings me what i need and make sure i don't get what i don't need and i go he's got me right where he wants me and i was kind of embarrassed because i didn't know what a cfo was you know i was fresh home from the penitentiary i never seen a credit card all i did was cash so um you know i always just say sean we there's no coincidences in the kingdom i don't think i made that term up but i think i coined it and i can't tell you how many times Sometimes me, Pastor Steve, Chris, so many people that I see that happens in life and I say, there's no coincidence.

4:28:58No coincidence that I'm sitting here. There's no coincidence that Joe Rogan, who was a straight-up nonbeliever back in the day, has had some amazing people on his show to fellowship with him. And now you see Joe is changing things. You've had some amazing people sitting in this chair that are theologians. And I mean, I had to come on after Jeremiah and I was like, this guy knows every verse. That mind of his is brilliant, you know, but God puts us in them places and he uses us at them times, you know, for that full surrender. And us just to be thankful and say, you got me. He's going to give you that time with your boy.

4:29:38He gave him to you, you know, your wife. And you spend the time with him. and everybody that knows you, we know so many people we talked about in the beginning of this podcast, so many people. You know what everybody tells me about you? Amazing husband, amazing father, amazing man. I don't think the guys that we're talking about were telling me that because they just wanted to talk into the air. Yeah. Those guys telling me about you because I seen them on your show. Yeah, that's cool to hear. That's cool to hear, right, bro? you know we're all play a part in the kingdom for sure

4:30:34see you later I don't saw this building. What do you think, Sean? We're high.

4:30:55Hi, I'm Sarah Adams, the host of Vigilance Elites, The Watch Floor, where we highlight what matters. It became a permissive state. explain to you why it matters, and then aim to leave you feeling better informed than you were before you hit play. Terrorists, hostile intelligence agencies, organized crime, not everything is urgent. But this show will focus on what is need to know, not just what is nice to know.

4:31:34all right mel we're back from the break let's talk about some of the stuff you're doing with core medical yes what is it um core medical a hormone replacement company obviously for men and women and um we've been blessed sean uh core medical has been in business for 16 years i believe plus years um but the last eight and a half years we've been really um had the blessing of working with our veterans as you know um we were talking about it we're huge my partner sydney and myself and the whole team are huge into our military veterans we're appreciative of it i think i said i came from a whole family full of veterans and stuff like that so um so we had the with the blessing of working with them and uh so um we have something that's called our core medical foundation Every year we have our core medical appreciation weekend and military appreciation weekend.

4:32:31It's usually the last weekend in February where this past year we just raised, I think,$160 ,000 or$80 ,000,$180 ,000 to donate back to our veterans. And just super cool to give back, Sean, to the men like you who served our country. You know, you guys gave that your time and sacrifice for our country, right? So Sydney and myself are super into that. And we're working on something cool right now. We're just about ready to put the finishing touches on. Something with the VA. As you know, working with the VAs for veterans and ducks could be a little taskful at some times, right? A little hard at some times, right?

4:33:15The VA? The VA. No. I say, me and Sydney always say, we don't like to talk bad about the VA because we didn't serve. But everybody who did serve, like, well, we will, right? So, you know, we will. So we're getting ready to put the finishing touches on something with that, where our veterans will be able to go to the VA and they will be able to get their hormone replacement and facilitated to them through us here at Quora Medical for completely free. That the VA will pay for their hormone replacement. And, you know, the VA right now doesn't even want to consider hormone replacement, right? And if they do, they're doing it the completely wrong way.

4:33:59They're giving a guy some testosterone every two weeks, which is the worst thing you could do. It's giving you that roller coaster ride, right? There's no supportive meds, no anti-estrogens or no medications to run your FSH and LH, which is the hormones in our testicles, right? They don't know what they're doing with it, right? So Sidney's been working, and it's been our prayer and our dream for the last eight and a half years that we can get the VA's attention. And he's talking to some people up there, the heads of the VA, who you and him knew the same person you guys were talking about earlier, and to get this done for our veterans.

4:34:36That would be so amazing that they would get this hormone replacement, the testosterone replacement, and getting it paid for from the VA. You know, it's been a... Man, that would be... How cool, Sean? That would be really big. I mean, we've been working and working. It's been our dream, you know, for the last eight and a half years, and we put some amazing people together on this team. Guys, you know, Rossville. I believe the VA isn't paying for that stuff yet. They won't even... This is hearsay. I don't go to the VA. I haven't gone to the VA in over 10 years. I'd rather just take care of my medical shit by myself and not have the VA involved.

4:35:23But I heard there have been a lot of improvements at the VA. But, man, everybody I know that I served with is on hormone replacement therapy. therapy and every doctor that i bring in here says pretty much we should all be on replacement therapy for sure except the va doctors except they don't think that because they're like you know you go in the va and the range for a man today is uh from on your testosterone levels from 300 to a thousand so if you're 301 they're like sean you're good yeah What about the other, you know, 700 points? Or what about what's my estrogen doing? What's my FSH and LH?

4:36:07They're plummeted. We're older men now, you know. They just don't seem to care about stuff like that. And we've seen it in ourselves. And so many people that you know that are part of our core medical team, they're our strategic partners from Tulaim to Vincent Rocco Vargas to Cody Alfred to Nick Kumulatis. cumulatis um uh we have a strong list of brothers that are our strategic partners who we've helped overcome that problem that they were having the va wasn't paying attention to their hormones you're good here take a take a percocet take this you know and they weren't doing that and we brought these these these men on and uh and watch the change and and with our outreach program with our you know our core medical foundation we've seen the the the brothers that we have taken and gotten their hormones clicking on all cylinders, as I like to say, changed their life around.

4:37:01And I see some guys that were like, we were taking all the medication that the VA was giving us and we were coming home and we couldn't even pay attention to our kids. We had no life in us. We were just blah, you know, and Nick K being one of them. And he jumped on the team with us and we got him on the hormone replacement and just, wow, just watched him. He's got two successful businesses he's running. He's, you know, so many people telling us we're working longer hours. We're doing this. We're focused. And that's what Sidney and myself, that was our dream, you know, eight and a half years ago when we started working with veterans and the first responders that we could get something done for them.

4:37:42And, you know, we have to jump through hoops, right? Every time we think we got to the top of the ladder, they put another step up for us. But, you know, Sidney and myself eight and a half years ago took some of these veterans for completely free. And we said, you know what? We're not going to deal with Washington and the VA no more. You're coming aboard with us. We got you. Nick K., we got you. You know, we're going to do this for you guys and get your hormone replacement. We're going to pay for it so we can see the benefits that's going on with your lives and stuff. And, you know, the suicide rate in veterans.

4:38:14And it's a proven fact through our doctors, through real-life studies that the suicide rate has dropped when these veterans, their hormones are running on all cylinders, right? There's a reason we have testosterone. We have estrogen. We have FSH and LH in our bodies. There's a reason. Like, there's no blood test for how white your fingernails are, right? But there's a blood test for all of them hormones for some guy to be saying, you're good. Take a Valium. you're good and you know they're not addressing it and that's what we wanted to do so we're so we're right there and if we can when we when i know we're going to get this done because i've been praying on it and we've seen the the good effects that it's having with people and uh we will be so happy when we can make that announcement that uh it went through and that veteran will go right to the va and he will get you know uh his his blood work done through us and the va will sign off on that veteran and then that veteran will come through us and the medications will be paid for from you know from the va so we're we're so close to that it's such a blessing for us and and another thing we do we have an outreach program scholarship so you know i tell anybody that's out there listening if you are through a hardship and you can't afford the testosterone replacement dm me please guys dm me everybody that's out there watching this if you're a veteran DM me.

4:39:40We have scholarships that will take care of that payment for you guys, right? You just come to us and let us know. If you're having a hard time in the hardships, we will work with veterans. When COVID was going on, we worked with anything. Everybody, Sidney sent me a message and he said, we are not getting rid of any of these patients. Some people were laid off. Some people couldn't work, right? And he goes, we called up the patients and we said, don't worry about it. if let's let's work on the honor program if you are laid off or you're a government worker whatever it was you didn't want to take the jab and you didn't you can't work let us know we're not going to stop your replacement wow we'll keep you going we kept them going and we said but be honest with us right don't take advantage of it let somebody who really needs it step up to the plate and um and we trust our patients and we know that we're good with them and they're good with us so So we're very excited for that.

4:40:38And like I said, the viewers, hit me up on a DM, and we will be able to talk and facilitate anybody that's looking to come our way. And once we get this thing done with the VA, it's going to be a game changer. Right on. Because as some veterans, some of them are down on their luck, right? Some of them are going through some hardships, and we've seen it. And I know you've seen it in so many people. and having your hormones back to where they're supposed to be at the age we're supposed to be at. At 57, I wouldn't keep my testosterone levels at the top of the range at 1 ,000. I don't need that no more.

4:41:17Me, I run in the middle 700s, take a little bit of testosterone to keep me there. It keeps me going. I couldn't do what I do with the travel. And I still train, and I'm still going all over the country without it. I would be plummeted. So, you know, that's what that's what we're very pleased on what we're doing and in the direction we're going in. And our veterans mean so much to us, you know, I hope that goes through. That would be great. That goes through. And when it does, I'll definitely let you know about that, you know, and maybe we can get back on and talk about that because that would just just help so many people out and change so many lives.

4:41:53Right. I'm a believer coming from the family I came from and the veteran family I came from and stuff. the sacrifices you guys go and do for us, and then the veterans come back here and we can't even facilitate them and help them out in any way, shape, or form. I mean, I don't want to get into any of the politics stuff, but if we're not taking care of our veterans here and the people that are fighting for our country to keep us safe, and we're going to take care of some people that might not be from this country or didn't do anything for us, it seems to me like it's upside down, right? without getting into a whole nother four hours of topic right but uh you know so that's what uh we've been working so strongly on that and we're and we're so pleased that where we're at and excited to to be able to make that announcement it's we're so close and if we can get this done it'll be it'll be a game changer for for our veterans to come in and being being taken care of and appreciated and that and that's what it's all about for sydney and myself when we have these military weekends and to see the families come and to see the kids of the families come and watching this one this one this one family that got one of the houses and just watching them tear up there it just man it's it tears me up but it just it's it makes me smile inside like like that we're making a difference and we're helping our brothers and sisters out that looked out for us right and uh you know not i didn't see everybody you know i didn't join the military look what i I went and did, right?

4:43:20I wasn't the first one standing up saying, I want to go serve my country. So the people that were, it means a lot to me. Coming from the family, like I said, I did, and seeing what the veterans did, and the sacrifices, and coming home, and some of these men and women having PTSD and going through what they're going through. We talked about Cody Alfred, right? You know, Cody would be the first one to come on here and say, man, he was in some dark places. And now I watch him, and I'm like, wow, what a different dude you know he keeps his hormones intact you know and he's got businesses and you know his relationship with the lord and you know he wasn't doing that a handful of years ago you know so we've watched it i've watched it change and that's why we've been like would have been great eight eight and a half years ago if we could have got into the va and and turned him around and got him on the on the team with this but he just didn't want to hear all that you know Yeah.

4:44:13So that's cool that we're I'm very excited for the future. That's awesome. How about this movie? Wow. When's that happening? So we are in the stage right now where they are talking to some writers. Right. You know, of course, Dwayne's relationship with The Rock's relationship, John's relationship with so many writers and movie studios and stuff like that. So, you know, they got the best of the best, you know. Almost seven years ago when we started this, I remembered Dwayne telling me, I'm going to put the A-team together for you. And, you know, I had no doubt in my mind that he was going to put the A-team together.

4:44:55And he sure did, you know. And we were talking about this the other night. And he said, you know, Mel, he goes, I know you're getting ready to go on, Sean. And he goes, but I just want the viewers to know something about you. He goes, you know, you didn't chase this. he goes I did me and him he goes I did he goes we talked on the phone we knew each other through a bunch of mutual friends you know and a bunch of mutual friends like me and you did do and when he said that you know how much of this old story can you tell cause of where you're at and I told him the story and he goes let me quarterback this for you you know and he goes it made me think about that he called me the other night and he said it just made me think about how you just sat back and just prayed about everything and through your relationship with the lord you said okay you trusted in me and uh and he goes and uh here we are today and he goes you know that says a lot he said mel for you he goes because some a lot of guys in your position would have been like call this guy up i got a story call this guy up i got a story and you know funny stories that that them guys tell me is just sit in the pool and relax for a little bit longer until we need you for this you know but then you're gonna have to go to work mel and i'm like I got you, DJ, I got you, you know?

4:46:05So we laugh and joke about all that in John. So it's super exciting. The writer phase is coming up next, you know? And, you know, with this stuff, it's a little bit of a process, right? We tell it organically. We put it together on our timing, no rush. And, you know, we have a home, which we'll talk about it at another time. And they will be making the movie for us. and um just we're in a really good spot so you know people ask me when when do you think you you know the movie could be you know you creating it filming and i think like that by this time next year i think that that will be uh we could be in the filming process filming the movie man which should be good yeah it's exciting because you know i'm obviously a consultant on the movie and um we'll be on the sets with with everybody you know and uh you know going over the parts and everything like that so i'm i'm definitely looking forward to that and of course you know you know getting that time with with dwayne and with john and stuff and uh getting john a little bit built up some more and feeding him and training him and stuff and getting the size funny story was when when when um uh when dj when he said hey i got the perfect guy that could play and you know and he said john bernthal you know he did that movie with them uh snitch you know where he was in there with John.

4:47:28And when he picked John and we were talking about, I laughed and he goes, what are you laughing about? He goes, oh, you know everybody, Mel, you know him. And I said, I know him. And I said, I'm going to tell you how I know him. And I told him it's Sidney's brother-in-law. And he was just shaking his head. And so we were like, we're not going to get an A-list actor. That's going to be 290 pounds, right? We always said that from the beginning of the story. And it's like, I got to put my mind to this and think of the perfect guy. So we call John up. We tell John the story. You know, I've already known him now through Sidney and the family.

4:48:00And we get John on the phone and we're all on a three-way call with the team. And Dwayne says, you know, John, you know, 10, 12 pounds on you, the video cameras, the angles and stuff like that. You know, you'll look massive on there. And John goes, 10, 12 pounds. I'm talking 30, 40 pounds. And I said, well, John, we're not trying to kill you. You got to live to play me, right? We can't kill you, you know. I said, it's going to be hard to get that kind of muscle. You're not a young kid anymore. But we'll definitely, with me training him and him eating the way he needs to eat. And John is so focused on whatever he does.

4:48:40Whatever part he is playing, he is focused. He's that method actor. He is focused on it. And, you know, DJ Dwayne is focused on what he's doing. And, I mean, I couldn't ask for two better guys in my corner doing this, right? And the Seven Buck production team has been nothing but amazing to work with. And I just love the journey to where we're at, right? I mean, you know, we know we're on our way to picking the writers and getting made. And we know that's going to be another adventure doing all that. but from where it started and where it's at now it's just been so cool and so amazing and i gained a dear friend out of it uh one of one of the guys at seven buck production um by the name of frankie who who he nicknamed himself my prospect because he had to put this story together right so he goes yeah i'm your prospect you know um he's like a little brother to me you know he just had his first uh baby him and his wife not too long ago and i got to see that and be a part of that and And, you know, through this journey, I got so close with these guys and just gained, I say, family out of it.

4:49:48So it's pretty cool to be where we're at now. I'm excited for that. You got a lot of good stuff happening. For sure, bro. It's cool to see. For sure. Cool to see. Takes us back to that full surrender. Yeah. I just give it up to him and your timing. I don't get impatient. COVID slowed things down. The writer's strike, the actor's strike. We went through all that. That slowed things down, you know. but we were okay. I remember Dwayne telling me, Mel, thank you for being this patient. I said, brother, it's good. It's in his timing. I think he's going to put out when he wants it to and reach the people he wants it to.

4:50:24I'm good. I'm going to do what you tell him and continue to relax and tan in the yard and hang in the pool and contend to my other businesses. I'm not pushing nothing along. I'm not grabbing the wheel, as I always say. The Lord's got the wheel and he is going to do this in his timing. So, you know, and I asked him before, I said, why a lot of people that you work with, DJ, do they get impatient? He said, yeah. He said, think about it. He goes, you know, we're almost seven years into this. He goes, it's a slow process over here. He goes, people are like, when's this going to happen? When's this going to happen?

4:50:57He goes, you're just laid back. And I said, I'm blessed to be part of what we're doing. That's cool. You know, so some, some very cool stuff coming up and I'm excited for it. And, And, you know, my prayer is the Lord, I tell the Lord, just keep me healthy. I got some injuries and I'm banged up a little bit and flying in the airports constantly. And, you know, go, go, go. Sometimes I get a little worn down a little bit with the body. But I said, you're going to keep me healthy until you bring me home. Right on, man. So I'm excited about the future with that, you know. I'll bet you are. Yeah, yeah.

4:51:32Well, Mel, we're wrapping up the interview here. Yeah. Well, we have this new thing that we do. It's called the hot question. Are you familiar with Claude? No. Anthropic? No. Okay. It's basically the most powerful large language AI model in the world right now. Oh, okay. But for consumers. So I had Claude scrape the internet, every interview, every viral clip, every controversial moment tied to you in the Hells Angels, and this is what it came back with. You ready? Am I ready? All right. The war between the Hells Angels and the Outlaws has been called one of the bloodiest biker wars in American history.

4:52:15During this war, Outlaws boss Kevin Spike O 'Neal reportedly told his hitmen that if the target's wife was home during the hit, to kill her too. Because in his words, If you begin killing these guys, those old ladies, they'll quit wanting to be Hell's Angels. So here's the question. What was the single most dangerous moment of your entire time in the Hell's Angels?

4:52:43So I know Spike. I know Kevin O 'Neal. You know, he's currently, you know, he got a life sentence. I think the most dangerous times I would have to say was with all them bombings that were going on. Now it wasn't face to face. We never know. You just flip the ignition and the car was going to blow up. You opened up a door. The door was going to blow up. I mean, if people were on the streets just kind of watching Mount Chansey back in the day and being like, this dude just came out of a store. He opened up the trunk of his vet and grabbed this big stick with a mirror on it. And at 290 pounds, I'm down on my knees looking at all the wheel wells and stuff like that.

4:53:32They probably thought I was a lunatic, right? Like, what is this guy doing? Can you imagine grocery shopping, waiting for your wife and I come out and do all that? you're like what is this knucklehead you literally did that every time yes holy shit yes because we never knew what if i went in the gym for two you know i trained for two hours i come out in that gym parking lot it's wide open like you know big to big the gym was in big uh parking lot big uh uh had also stores around it if they went on that one and under there and did that you know or when we weren't at the clubhouse wired something an explosive to the door ever find anything ever one of our guys one of our guys found an explosive device under his wheel well of his truck i believe it was a bronco chris chris will know a little bit more when you talk to him because they had to come in the atf had to come in he found the device so he called up the local police and said hey there's something under my truck that doesn't look too kosher it's got some wires hanging from it and i think we probably need you guys out well they called the atf out they had to come out and with their with their bomb squad they had to build a perimeter around this because they couldn't i believe if i'm saying it right they couldn't uh do you detach it and they hit it with a water cannon to blow it up no they had to explode the bomb with the water cannon but they built a perimeter around it and uh they couldn't deactivate it and they hit it like that so yeah we uh he found that under his truck i never found nothing under mine you know in my house doors and stuff everywhere I went I always was looking around when I pulled up to one of my houses at nighttime and got out of my vehicle my gun was in my hand wasn't ready for me to pull out it was in my hand with one in the chamber and the in the in the hammer back back in the day you know ready to go in case they were hiding in the bushes or wherever they were so you know I think that dangerous most dangerous times for me is when when all them bombings started because now it could have came from anywhere you know if we ran into each other we were face to face then it was on face to face and whatever happened happened you know but them bombings was uh definitely a time that we all had to be alert and looking back now definitely the most dangerous times roger that there's a follow-on if someone was caught out here wearing a hell's angels patch and they didn't earn it what actually happened to them and did you ever have to be the one to handle that personally?

4:56:05We did have an incident and the guy had his whole back tattooed with a Hells Angel patch. Are you serious? Yeah, and he ended up coming into our neighborhood. We didn't know him. But when he was approached, he said that he was a member in Oakland of all places where Sonny and the crew were from, right? So he said he was a member in Oakland back in the day. Well, when you leave the club, you put an out date on your tattoo. So when you have a tattoo on you, wherever you have the Hells Angel tattoo, if you leave, it'll say out 10, you know, or April, 4-11-2-4-04. You know, my out date was under here.

4:56:52I covered it up, you know, it was under there. It said out, you know, the month you're out, the year you're out. so you couldn't go see anybody and go look i'm an active hell's angel right so that you had an out date when you left the club he didn't have an out date on there but he was telling the fellows that you know people around the neighborhood that you know he was a hell's angel he's from oakland he got the tattoo so when we got a hold oakland and and said this guy's name they never heard of him so now it was our job to go remove that tattoo remove it remove the tattoo and that's exactly what we did we caught him in a bar dragged him out on off obviously not on his own will and put him in a van and put some irons on it

4:57:42took the tattoo off but you know i i don't you know i didn't know the guy i'd never seen him before he ended up in our neighborhood and we kept hearing about him he was telling people about he's had tank tops on and you know what he was thinking but uh i mean that happens it's crazy that that happens nowadays you know you can go get the the replica the patches from china you can go hit any club and get their whole entire stuff the president tags the tags the back the fronts and you see the fake stuff going on you know i responded earlier there was a fake uh where there was a mongol taking a hell's angel patch off a guy on a motorcycle and he took the patch off him the supposed hell's angel and the guy didn't even get off his bike to do anything and the mongol grabbed it and your team was showing me a video earlier and i had to respond on it and i go yeah as soon as i seen that i knew that was fake there was no altercation the mongol pulled up and you I believe it was both staged.

4:58:43They both were fake, right? But as crazy as that sounds, I mean, there was people going and doing that. I mean, no tattoo artist that was in our neighborhoods would go put the Hell's Angel tattoo at Death Hat on somebody unless they heard it from us. We worked with a few tattoo guys. So when a member got in the club, you went to our tattoo artist and you got the tattoo on you right away, right? It was the first thing you were doing after you got your patch. going to you know after you're partying for the next day you're going to the tattoo shop and you're putting your you know my first hell's angel tattoo was right under here you know um but there was tattoo artists that were you know these guys were coming in with the stencil and saying hey i'm a member here when you put this on me damn they weren't you know using their head and weren't thinking and we've had that incident too where we had a we had a school a couple tattoo artists you don't put that on nobody unless it's coming from us we don't even know you Why would you do that?

4:59:41So, you know, it's as crazy as it sounds, Sean. People are... Doesn't surprise me. Yeah, it's as weird as could be, right? That's the last thing I'd want to do is if I was just a normal person. I mean, even if I thought it was cool and I looked up to these clubs, I wouldn't want to go put their insignia on me. You know, members have gave their life for that club, obviously. Look what we all went through, right? The people we lost gave up their lives to be a part of what we felt was, you know what we believed in the ultimate sacrifice so yep well mel i figure maybe we can end this with a prayer yeah you want to lead it i would love to bro i would love to

5:00:26heavenly father father we thank you we thank you for this fellowship kind with you thank you for Sean. Father, I thank you for Sean. I thank you for his life. I thank you for speaking upon his heart, blessing his family. Lord, we thank you for your Holy Spirit that guides us, that leads us, Lord. That's upon our hearts, full surrender, that we may know your word, your word, your truth would set us free. And Father, we pray that everybody that would watch this podcast, that they would deeply feel your Holy Spirit here upon us. That they would understand that no, they are not too far gone. No matter where they're at, rock bottom, as I say, rock bottom is build some of the best relationships with you, Lord.

5:01:19From prisons to hardships, let them feel your presence. Meet them, Father, right where they are. they may know and feel your love. Each and every one of us. Because you, Father, loved us so much that you gave us your one and only Son, our Lord and our Savior, Jesus Christ. And whoever shall believe and call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. May they know that. May they feel that. May this podcast be a blessing to brothers and sisters. And in your name, Jesus, we believe. in your name Jesus we pray and all God's people said Amen Beautiful Thank you bro Man so cool Bill God bless brother God bless you Super happy we've had an amazing day Me too I've been looking forward to this since we set this up 4, 5, 6 weeks ago I've been looking forward to it praying on it And my expectations were met, Sean.

5:02:33I'll have to tell you that. It's been great. And you are, just as them guys were telling me about, you are a good dude and an amazing dude. And I can see your passion. I can see your heart. And I can see what the Lord's doing in your life. And what a blessing that is, right? Guys like me and you, right? Two knuckleheads, I'll say, right? Who ran the gamut, right, Sean? and checked every mark off of being knuckleheads. And here we are. Right back at you, man. Love you, bro. Thank you.

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