ALLEGATIONS BY BIKERS PIN BLAME ON FORMER COSSACK
Former Cossack Nomad Owen “Big O” Reeves
Waco – Let’s call her Live Wire, a road name earned by her fortitude and stamina on a run, bestowed by a brother biker.
When she heard Assistant Prosecutor Amanda Dillon quiz a witness at a recent recusal hearing about how the Cossacks Motorcycle Club adopted the 1%er patch of the outlaw motorcycle “gang,” she moved fast from her spot on the social network from a spot far out of town to say it just isn’t so.
Her allegation: Only one clique in the Cossacks MC did any such thing, a chapter led by Owen “Big O” Reeves, who allegedly has ties to the Aryan Circle prison clique. Reeves was arrested at Twin Peaks on May 17, 2015, among 177 persons; his stepson was killed by a bullet to the back of the head.
He had been at the location on a number of occasions in the weeks leading up to the violent confrontation that left 9 men dead and 20 wounded. According to a blog entry by Amy Irene White, “The Wicked Bitch,” he and a Waco narcotics detective named Jason Barnum confronted members of the Confederation of Clubs and Independents who appeared there on bike nights organized by the owner.
One time, “‘Big O’ Reeves and another Cossack cornered a CofC member and got really belligerent, trying to coerce him into a fight…”
His companion, according to multiple informants, none other than the Waco narc, Barnum, who later lost his job because he punched out a doctor he believed to be having an affair with his wife.
“In the ensuing weeks, Owen and his little friend seemed to be on a mission, privately ‘meeting’ with various members of the Cof C attempting to convince them to abandon the coalition and making that ridiculous noise about ‘paying dues to the Bandidos,’ which, of course, no one except a cop or a reporter on CNN would believe anyway.” But there’s an interesting twist to the story. Big O never put a 1%er patch on his cut until after he became a Nomad, and that wasn’t until after the violent events at Twin Peaks. When he did, the Cossacks’ national leadership ousted he and his followers, said they would send national sergeants-at-arms to reclaim his colors. All are reportedly out in bad standing, indefinitely suspended from the Cossacks and not likely to ever be allowed back in the fold.
The Bandidos believed it.
In an exclusive interview granted in March of this year, then Presidente of the Bandidos MC, U.S.A., Bill Sartelle revealed that the club no longer helps collect dues from members of the Confederation, that it is now a non-profit 501(C)(3) corporation with a structure similar to that of the NFL, all its appendant clubs being similar to franchises of the professional football organization.
In fact, Sartelle let us know there is no war with the Cossacks – or anyone else – that the notion that the clubs rumbled over a Texas “rocker” on their jackets, territory, or anything of the like, is pure nonsense.
It looks like the cops don’t know how to make such fine distinctions. Knowing about the friction, and the potential for violence, a Patrol Watch Commander of the Waco Police Department made his move by calling on John Wilson, president of the Waco Cossacks Chapter, at his place of business then located on I-35 in that city.
Reeves and his fellow Cossacks hail mostly from Bell County, and Reeves himself lived at Bruceville-Eddy, near the county line. According to a police report , the police commander encouraged Wilson to go to the planned COC&I event of Sunday, May 17, in order to spread oil on the water.
The same day, at Gordon, Texas, on I-20, near the Cossacks’ redoubt at Mingus, motorcyclists at first misidentified by cops as Bandidos had beaten a Cossack as he attempted to fill his scooter with gasoline at a truck stop. They later confirmed their affiliation was that of the Villistas, according to defense counsel Casie Gotro.
On the 28th, the cops were watching carefully as Bandidos gathered at the Flying J Truck Stop on I-35 at New Road, about a mile from Wilson’s Legends Cycles, which was at that time located near the intersection of Valley Mills Dr. It was all part of a running battle that had raged up and down I-20 between Odessa and Abilene, one fought with hammers, knives and clubs. The Waco cops, who weren’t having it, were part of a much larger federal task force in which officers from small towns, sheriff’s departments, the Texas DPS, as well as federal agencies such as BATFE, FBI, and DEA worked on federal indictments. The Waco substation of the effort is headed by a Texas Department of Corrections staffer from the Office of the Inspector General, who coordinates his operation with the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force.
That organization is similarly staffed; its members serve arrest warrants on accused offenders and those ordered back to prison on “blue warrants” for alleged parole and probation violations.
“If they had just arrested the ones who assaulted the Bandido at Lorena, the whole thing would have been settled,” our lady biker friend from out of town believes. She’s not alone. There are numerous defense attorneys who are doing some serious investigation into the matter.
It is perhaps entirely ironic that the affidavit of warrantless arrest that led to the jailing of 177 persons at Twin Peaks after the violent ambush of the Bandidos by Cossacks and the shooting from ambush by cops who concealed themselves outside the fracas as it developed while video surveillance cameras took it all down from dashboards and pole-mounted devices alleges the conspiracy offense of engaging in organized criminal activity that led to capitol murder, and/or aggravated assault.Like the federal charge, it calls for a lifetime behind bars upon conviction for engaging in a felony crime in combination with another person or persons.
Two years prior, the Aryan nations of the penal system had reached a compromise with the federales and locales following a series of events resembling a comedy of errors in a macabre funhouse of murder by arson, assault by a syringe filled with methamphetamine forcibly injected into a woman’s neck, video of the molestation of a child, car theft, and, of course, meth cooking and dope dealing.
When a mother of three lost her life and two of her small children perished in a sudden explosion and blaze at a Bosqueville trailer park, the investigation led to a parallel operation carried out by Waco police looking into just how and why a clique of dopers sold a car to an area dealer, stole it back, then secreted the purloined Mustang under a tarp near Bruceville-Eddy. Seven people faced an indictment for – you guessed it – engaging in organized criminal activity – until Assistant DA Michael Jarrett demanded to know the names of the confidential informants who provided the information that led to the arrests.
That’s when veteran Detective Sherry Kingrey refused to cooperate, her move backed by the Chief of Police Brent Strohman, and his entire chain of command. After 19th District Criminal Court Judge Ralph T. Strother, who has been recused in four of the Twin Peaks cases for bias against bikers alleged by their defense attorneys, examined the confidential notes of the detectives, he said that in 19 years on the bench and a long run as a prosecutor prior to that, he’d never seen anything like it in his life.
When he wound up telling the cops and prosecutors to settle their differences in private, DA Abel Reyna announced he was going to decline to pursue the prosecution of the indictments. We of the Legendary obtained the entire police file in a Public Information Act request following an oversight by the Waco Police to comply with an appeal deadline.
A bad scene, it definitely qualifies as a precursor to what was to come two years later, at Twin Peaks. As a result, a fair representation of Texas’ activist motorcycle enthusiasts have been legally isolated, silenced by conditions of bond, surveilled and prosecuted to an extent unprecedented by anything seen previously.
USA - The Legendary
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