Shawn Ryan Show - #303 Mel Chancey - Youngest President in Hells Angels History

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

Born and raised near Chicago, Illinois, Mel Chancey grew up in a Catholic household, even serving as an altar boy. But early in life, he found identity and belonging in motorcycle club culture. What began as camaraderie evolved into full immersion in the outlaw biker world. He became part of the Hell’s Henchmen before the club patched over to the Hells Angels, quickly rising through the ranks due to his intensity, loyalty, and commanding leadership presence. At a young age, he was serving as a chapter president. In that world, brotherhood was everything. Life revolved around respect, territory, and reputation. Mel has spoken openly about the violent rivalries, bombings, turf wars, and constant hyper-vigilance required to survive. The bombing of their Chicago clubhouse marked a turning point, escalating tensions and deepening the cost of leadership. Power, ego, loyalty, and fear blurred moral lines — and carrying the weight of that conflict came with consequences. Eventually, Mel was arrested in a federal case tied to club activity and served years in prison under RICO-related charges. Prison became the defining turning point of his life. Stripped of his title, patch, and status, he describes hitting rock bottom in a quiet cell where self-examination became unavoidable. It was there that he returned to his Christian faith — praying, reading Scripture, and experiencing what he calls a true spiritual awakening. The identity once rooted in reputation and intimidation was replaced with surrender, humility, and conviction. Walking away from that life was not simple. It meant losing brotherhood, history, and everything familiar. Mel emphasizes that leaving was the hardest decision he ever made — and the strongest one. Today, he is a motivational speaker focused on faith, redemption, masculinity, and discipline. He is active in the bodybuilding community, affiliated with organizations such as IFBB and NPC, using physical training as a metaphor for rebuilding life through structure and accountability. As Managing Partner at Core Medical Group, he works in health and wellness, specializing in hormone optimization and holistic performance. Now a devoted husband, father, and grandfather, Mel Chancey is committed to building legacy instead of reputation — living proof that transformation is possible and that second chances can redefine a life. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Ready to upgrade your eyewear? Check them out at https://roka.com and use code SRS for 20% off sitewide. Face the decisions our founders grappled with in Revolutionary America, a Hillsdale Studios film. Only in theatres May 31 - June 2. Get your tickets now by going to https://hillsdale.edu/revolution Download Cash App Today: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/14ipql92 #CashAppPod As a Cash App partner, I may earn a commission when you sign up for a Cash App account. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Bitcoin services provided by Block, Inc. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures. Get 30% off your first subscription order of ARMRA Colostrum at https://armra.com/srs or enter code SRS at checkout. BetterHelp is now accepting insurance in many states with average copays around $23—fill out the questionnaire and check your coverage today at https://betterhelp.com/SRS. #ad Mel Chancey Links: IG - https://www.instagram.com/melchancey316 IG - https://www.instagram.com/john316devotionalteam IG - https://www.instagram.com/chanceyfitness WEB - www.chanceyfitness.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mel Chancy, welcome to the show. John, thank you, brother. And I'm excited. Yeah, I'm excited too. Man, I can't believe how many mutual friends we have. So last week, I started getting texts from all my buddies saying, oh, I heard you have a Mel on the show. Oh, you got to ask him about all this stuff he's doing.

No, he's got a movie coming out. But Blake Cook, Cody Alford, Ray Cash, two lamb. Yeah. So many. You baptized Cody, right? Baptized Cody at our core military event, our appreciation, our military appreciation weekend. And that was the last weekend in February. That was about a year ago, right? No, just this one that passed.

Did this, that was just this year? Just this one, yeah, just a few months ago, the end of February. And Cody had asked me, and he said, I'm ready. And I said, you are? I said, where do you want to do it? And back of my partner's, Sidney Gordon's spot, he's on this big, you know, the inter-coastal in South Carolina. I go, you want to do it out there?

And he goes, yeah. And I said, you know, they're catching some bull sharks out there. And there's a lot of stuff out there, right? And he goes, we'll be good. I go, he's got a big bathtub upstairs. And he goes, no, bro, I want to do it out there. And I said, okay, so I was, like, mentally prepared. And, like, he asked me the night before, and we were doing it, like, at noon the next day.

So I was like pacing around as the first person I ever baptized. He's the first person. First person I've baptized. You know, and I wasn't really sure at first, but you know what the word tells us. What Jesus said to the disciples, go out and baptize in the name of the father, son, and the Holy Spirit, right? So we're all qualified as believers. So, you know, I wasn't really tripping out on that part. I was tripping out on the, you know, what I see Sidney and the boys catching out of there, right?

You know, so it threw me off a little bit, Sean, right? But we got it done and we got some great. video of it and you know there was a lot of mud out there we had another dear friend of our colton hill that came out there to help me too because you know Cody's a big a big kid these days right and i'm dropping them down and i'm not 300 pounds anymore so i was like can i get them back up and and but it was it was amazing and uh and now he's on the team and he's on fire for the lord Cody's really his eyes are open Sean and uh and he know he calls everybody calls me they're big brother whether they're older than me or not they're like my's our big brother

because you know I look out for everybody. But yeah, it was amazing. And so many people that we know, I was like, you know, I was an honor for me to come here and sit with you. Man, that's cool. That's, yeah, I was really happy to see Cody take that step. That was awesome. Yeah.

I mean, how did that feel to baptize somebody for the first time? It was cool. I mean, I made it through. I didn't start crying until them two dudes did, right? Because I'm like, all right, you got to say the words here. And I got to be, and there had to be 250, people on Sydney's dock because we're at our military appreciation weekend that we throw once a year. We have a big outreach for our military, a core medical foundation.

And we do this for our military. We raised $180,000 to donate to for our military men and women. And we teamed up with this company beyond the barracks. And that does, builds houses for our veterans and stuff like that. So we had a full crew there that were watching this. Everybody came out on Sydney's dock, and I was thinking, I hope this thing holds, right? But we went down in the water, and it was amazing. As soon as I started speaking, Cody started shaking, and then Colton started shaking,

and I'm like, I had to hold it together here and say these words, right? And it was just so cool, man, and we all hugged. And then you see the videos of me running out. It was low tide, Sean, when this was going on. And back there, you know, it was all mucky mud. And when I watched Colton take a few steps, he took one step and he went all the way down to his hip. And he goes, yeah, that's not water, Mel. And I'm like, ah, so I'm at 57, I'm a little older.

I'm trying to hold on to these guys, right? And then you got the videos of me running out. They're like, Mel, you were running out of there. I said, yeah, I ran faster than when I got the federal sentence, right? I said, I didn't want to need me out there. But it was an amazing thing. You know, I was honored that he had asked me, you know, We became close and, you know, through the years, he's been, you know, talking to me a lot about it.

And he wanted to make sure he was ready. And I said to do that. I made sure I was ready before I got baptized, you know. I was a believer for many years before I made my outward, you know, claim. How do you know when you're ready? I'm just curious. I mean, in your mind, when are you ready? I can't pray in, Sean.

You know, I grew up in a very strict Catholic home. And my mom, all Italian, my dad was German and Sweden. and he called himself to Heinz 57. He had a lot in them, right? And, but, you know, my mom, my two, I had two older sisters, so I was raised in that strict women, Italian family, is the only boy. So, you know, when you're in that kind of family and Italian family and you're the only boy, they spoil you. You have to get spoiled, right? So that's kind of what threw me off with all the women later in life, right? But I had known the Lord and was an altar boy and, you know, CCD and caddicism made my communion and everything. So obviously, I, you know, as we'll get into it,

I veered off a different path and, you know, wasn't fellowshiping with the Lord through all the hell's angel years. But so when I got the RICO indictment and ended up in, you know, sitting in a federal holding facility with no bond, that's when I got down on my knees and I felt the presence of the Lord. On my heart, it was heavy. And I just got down and I said, you know what, Lord, I can't do this no more. I'm tired of crash in the car because this was my second time back to the penitentiary. we'll get into the first time, but this was my second time. And I said, here I am.

I said, I don't know what I'm looking at, 24 years at 85%. It could have been the outcome. I said, but you know. I said, but now I want to give you the full surrender. Because when I came home from prison the first time, I gave them about 70% surrender. I left the motorcycle club. You know, we weren't doing all that craziness. I wasn't selling drugs anymore, but I couldn't give up the womenizing part.

And I thought, to my motorcycle. myself, you know, I'm not that bad of a guy anymore. We're not shooting guys off motorcycles. We're not blowing the city up. And I'm not selling drugs. But the women I seen thing took another toll because now I wasn't running the club anymore. And I had all this extra time with all these extra women around me. I was running a big nightclub in Chicago. Right. So, but I waited free. I got baptized in 2019. So I waited years. I just was working on my relationship with the Lord, you know, and we know baptism is only your outward expression for it. It doesn't, that it's not what's saving you, right? And my relationship with the Lord was solid.

And I went back home to Chicago, and I had my 41-year friend, Pastor Steve Trolio, who runs the Firehouse Chapel, his congregation over there, I had him baptize me in his pool. And where I spent many years, I've known Pastor Steve since I've been 16 years old. He knew me before I joined the motorcycle club when I was pouring concrete. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So that's how far I go back with him.

And so I told him, we call him trooper. I said, Trooper, I said, I would love for you to baptize me in your pool where I spent many years. Even as the Hell's Angel leader, I was, you know, they never, him and his wife and family didn't turn their back on me for that, right? They just continued to pray for me. No kidding. As I was going through all that. Yeah. Yeah.

And they went through a lot, too, because, you know, their congregation, they had people in their congregation saying, And why are we praying for Mel? We're just watching them on TV. His house got raided again. They blew this building up. They shot these people over here. We're praying for that guy. And he told him, yes.

He said, we're a rescue station here at the firehouse chapel. One foot from the gates of hell. We're praying for the lost. And some people left the congregation over that. You know, that they didn't want no part of that, you know. So he's been, we call him trooper. He's been in my corner and for so long. And it's just amazing what we get to do now with each other.

And from the John 316 devotional team to something from the boxes of hope we'll get into that we feed the children. And it's just amazing to see. So I knew I was ready, you know, when I asked them in 19. And that's when I told Cody the year before, at our military event the year before, Cody was asking me. And then he came up to me later and he goes, not sure that I'm going to do it this year. And I said, Cody, that's something that you have to feel here. I said, you already have your relationship as the Lord? He goes, yes, I do.

And I said, okay, that's what matters. Your outward thing is just, you got this. When you're ready, you'll know the timing. Right on. Came up to me that first day we were there and, you know, that night we got there in the town and told me that. And he's like, let's do it tomorrow. We want to do it at noon. I said, okay.

So I had all them hours of thinking of, you know, that water. Like I said, I was more, you know, nervous about the water than doing it. But that was my first one. And then, as you can imagine, after seeing that and everybody, and that getting out on video, my DMs blew up. Now everybody wants you to baptize it. Yeah, and I tell everybody, I'm like, listen, if you have a pastor that you're close with,

give him the honor. You know what I mean? I don't want to go baptize anybody just because they say, oh, Mel Chansy baptized us. That's not the right thing. So I always say, everybody's qualified, but if you have a congregation and you've been tied with your pastor, give him the honor.

If you don't have one, then we'll revisit it. that and let's talk about that somewhere down the line and me being in Florida over there and I'm on the golf side right in the nice water everybody wants to come down there and do it you know and then I married my partner Sydney I married Sydney and his wife Jackie and that was the first I never did a marriage right I had to go online and get the everything done Sean right and get the Reverend card and everything like that so you know they got married in in the in Boca Raton at the at the courthouse and I we had we went on a family vacation in Mexico and then I married him on the beach there. Well, that video got

out so everybody was like, no, we want, can you marry us? And I was like, I can't do none of this stuff right here. Right on. From the guy who never wanted a job and now all this stuff was coming up. But you know, it's great that I get the fellowship with people about that, you know, the baptism and and in the love of our Lord. I love that. Yeah, that's really cool. Cody sent me that video like the day it happened. He did. I was like super proud of him. Yeah. And what a, like, what a just phenomenal human being. He is a great, I call him a young man. He is a great young man, you know.

But let's talk about you now. Yes. All right. So I'm going to give you an introduction here. Yeah. Mel Chancy. Catholic altar boy from Chicago expelled from school at age 16, also a father at age 16, the youngest president in Hell's Angels history.

He ran the Chicago chapter. Over a decade in the outlaw biker world. front lines of a six-year war with the outlaws, bombing, shooting, stabbings. Your clubhouse got hit with what you call the third largest bomb in U.S. history at the time. Your job in the club, show up with a ball pin and hammer's, and do all the beatings. An ATF agent called you, in quotes, one of the true believers that elimination of the enemy was the mission. Caught a federal RICO case, sentenced to nine years, served three. 30 months, found Jesus in prison, not a jailhouse conversation, a complete transformation.

Today, you're a husband, a father, a grandfather, a born-again Christian, and John Berthal and The Rock are making a movie about your life. Wow. And I had to trim that down about 10 lines. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I never thought I would be wearing so many hats later in life as I do now. And, I mean, I love it.

It's a blessing. My grandgirls, 18, or 9, I'm sorry, 19, and soon to be 12, and two grand-grand-great, Michaela and Haley. My daughter's soon to be 40. She's up in Gallatin here in Tennessee. Oh, no kidding? Yeah, yeah. She moved down here about two years ago.

We're going to go spend a few days up with her. Good for you. After we leave you. And, you know, having her so young. And then now seeing, you know, with the grandgirls and everything, it's just, it's my pride. my wife Melissa as you met, she's, you know, on the other side out there. And everything that I never wanted, I used to tell the guys in the club like, you're married, you got the white picket fence.

I just never wanted to do that, right? I just wanted to be that youngster running around, girls and every city I went to, you know, being with the Hells Angels, I was everywhere. California, New York, all through, you know, the only places I really didn't get to go was out of the country a lot because being who I was at the time, they weren't trying to let me get in and out of the country is too easy. So I was like, well, that's my call to stay here in the United States. But, you know, traveling the way I traveled and, you know, with the women and the violence, it just kind of took me over. And I did never want that now. I walk my yard in Florida with a white vinyl fence, been married for 16 years. My grandbabies are my life, my daughter, and, you know,

my partner, Corps Medical, Sydney, and just the family that I have now, you know, I was always close with my family. My family was very close. My two older sisters, one was 10 years older to me, one's 12 years older than me. And, you know, that Italian family on Sunday, we were always at my mom and dad's house for that Italian meal. You know, I might have had a different stripper on the back of my bike coming over there, but, you know, the family, they were good to everybody. You know, my family was very close. So I grew up in that close-knit family, knowing that. family. That's how I, you know, acted when I was, you know, what the hell's angels in that, that was my family, you know. But seeing what I'm doing now is I think back and I said, only you,

God, because it's everything that I didn't want, a job, any kind of career. They used to laugh back in the day. People used to come to my friends and to guys in the club to talk to me and they say, we got this business opportunity for Mel. And they'd say, is it legal? And they go, yeah, of course. They're like, he don't want it. They would tell him he don't want none to do it. Yeah, but he can be a consultant. They're like, he ain't going for it, man. If it ain't in the underworld, he don't want to touch it.

And it's just the way I was, you know, in that life. Right up. Well, before we get too far under it, we've got a couple of things to crank out. So I got a Patreon account. It's quite the community. They're the reason I get to sit here with you today. And so they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question. Yeah.

And the most popular question. Probably 50 people asked it, if you could pick any motorcycle in the world, what's your favorite? What's your favorite bike? So I have to say... You still ride? No, I don't. I gave it all up, everything. I haven't been on a bike since 0-4 since when I came...

The indictment was 04. I came home in 08. I haven't been on. For me, that reason, as I say is, I can't dip my toe in the pool. It's like a recovery, an alcoholic recovering, you know, drug addict or whatever. that was my addiction, the women, the strip clubs, the violence, the motorcycles, you know. And I know a lot of guys that left the club and they still ride and it's, you know, maybe it's weird and my screwed up mine. But I just left all of that behind and I just don't. I, you know,

have that vision of one day maybe I got on a bike and all of a sudden I'm like, oh, man, I remember that feeling and then I'm in a strip club and then I'm losing the marriage and losing my partners. And so I don't ride. So I don't know the new motorcycles. But my favorite old school bike that I had. I had the FXRs back in the day. Them were our run bikes, right? When we were going, you know, cross-country and the, you know, out of state in different runs, you know, we had the FXRs. But I had an old school shovelhead with ape hangers and a suicide shift on it, hard tail. Just, you know, just an old school one. And that was my favorite bar-to-bar bike. Because you could imagine that 300 pounds with the Hells Angel patch on and me rolling down the road. It was probably a sight

to see you, right? I would imagine. Yeah. So that was my, you know, my, around the hood bike that I loved so much, you know, and I still have all the pictures of them and stuff. But the new bikes, I don't know. So I'm going to go back to the old school. Right on a high.

I would be on. Thank you. And then everybody gets a gift. Ah. Thank you. Some gummy bears. Some gummy bears. And listen, we have some gifts from you.

So first off, we have. one of the John 316 devotional team shirts, right? Which just happens this year, this year, today is the six-year birthday for the John 316. Is it really? Today is our six-year birthday. Congratulations. Thank you.

And so I have the shirt for you and the wristband, okay? And I got to say this because how that got started is my 30-plus year friend, Terry Balea, aka Hulk Hogan, bought me a.m. a book by a lady named Sarah Young and it's called Jesus Calling, Morning and Night. It's a devotional book, right? I got a whole stack of them over there. You got them, right? I almost gave you one, but I think you're a little too advanced.

Yeah. Thank you for that. Thank you. I'm being serious. I give them out on the show all the time. It's amazing, because them, especially her. Them devotinals are great. It's a morning and nighttime.

So Terry called me up on a Tuesday night, and he said, hey, brother. And I said, what's up, Tara? he goes, hey, did you read tomorrow morning's devotional yet? And I go, why would I read tomorrow morning's devotional? It's not Wednesday morning yet. He goes, why read ahead, you know? And he goes, I think that you should read that devotional and record it and put it out on your social media. I said, yeah, why don't you do it?

You got millions of followers compared to my couple hundred thousand, you know? And he goes, and he'd hulked up on me. He goes, because I want you to do it. He goes, I think this would be great for your following and everything like that. I said, okay. So I put my, I put my phone on a coffee can. Because I want you to do. He used to Hulk up on me all the time, right?

It was like his little brother. And so I put my phone, leaned it on a coffee can, read the morning devotional. I didn't never said, good morning team. We didn't have a name. We just as the first one, right? And then I read the passages that are in the bottom of that book out of the, out of the Bible. And I said, I hope everybody has a blessed day. I said, hope everybody feels us.

And that was it. A couple days later, I start looking through my DMs, and I have all these DMs from these men and women, these brothers and sisters, saying, Mel, we felt that. That spoke directly to us. And it was just amazing. I was like, wow, and I called Terry up. And he goes, see, I told you. He goes, you should do that every day. So I do it Monday through Friday because I travel a lot on the weekends, whether I'm with my core medical team or I run the bodybuilding industry, the IFBB and the NPC.

So I'm going a lot on the weekends. And so I do it Monday through Friday. finally the team asked, hey, could we get a name? And I prayed on it. And of course, the John 316 devotional team. And, you know, that's how that started. So I told Terry, you know, years later after that, I said, you created a job for me out of a guy that you know that doesn't like to work, right? We were always laughing because, you know, he never wanted a job. He became a wrestler. I never wanted a job. So, and that's how the team started. And today's the sixth year birthday. Man, congratulations. Thank you, bro. It was so cool. And we have another gift.

for you. This is an amazing gift that you're going to love, but this is a gift that I can't touch myself, right? So being my past, I can't touch it. So my partner, Sidney Gordon, who is the CEO of Core Medical, he is going to come out and give you this gift. And I think you're really going to enjoy the show. Oh, shit. Nate and I have really close friends from Sons and Eotech. Hook this up, Huxworth break on there. We can get the suppressor for you, but this is the new Mark I. from Sons. Holy shit. Dude.

How cool is that, bro? Dude, that is awesome. And obviously, I don't know much about them. But Sydney is a gun advocate and is the smartest person I know with the guns that I see around, you know. And he said, this would be a great gift for Sean. And we put the John 316 devotional team on there, the Sean Ryan podcast. and Core Medical. Dude, this is awesome.

That's a cool one, huh? Thank you. You're welcome, brother. Smooth. Yeah, yeah. Smooth. Yeah, that's cool looking. And, you know, and as you know, with me not being able to, as I say, touch them,

look at them with my background, I surround myself by people that can carry, right? As you know, all of our friends, my wife, you know. Really? Yeah. Yeah, I surround myself by people like that. So, you know. Thank you. You're welcome.

This is awesome. Yeah, we thought you'd enjoy that. Break that in after the interview. Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. You ready? I'm ready. All right, it's going to be a heavy one. I know.

All right, Mel. Where'd you grow up? So I was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago in a town called Elsup, which is about 20 minutes out of the actual city. born and raised their strict upbringing, as I told you, I was an altar boy, catechism. We lived 10 steps from the church. I would walk out my back gate, take a right and walk 10, 15 steps, and we were at the church. I grew up in that.

My mom and dad were very strict Catholics. My dad was a hardworking man raising myself and my two sisters. So my mother was at home. Are you the oldest? I'm the youngest. You're the youngest. I'm the youngest. My older sister, Carol, is 12 years older than me.

And my sister, Jackie, was 10 years older than me. And she passed about a year or so ago. She had MS real bad. Sorry to hear that. Thank you. So she passed. So I was raised by my sisters and my mom. You know, my dad was home.

My dad was my baseball coach growing up. I played baseball all my life every time I went to a new league, my dad. became the coach. So my dad was coach Mel. I was named after him, you know, so my dad was coach Mel. My mom ran the concession stands and gave the communion out from church to the people that couldn't come to church and get communion, you know, that were, you know, older people and couldn't make it to church. So our family was real pillars of the community, you know. I was little Melvin running around to everybody in the neighborhood, you know, and grew up. I'm still friends with all the kids. I grew up with. All the guys and girls that I grew up with, I never, even through all the

motorcycle years, I remained friends with all them kids. No kidding. Yeah, yeah, the girls I play truth or dare with. And you know what I mean? I'm kissing them under my mom's pool and stuff like that. I'm still friends with them to this day. Most gear looks good until you actually start using it. Then you find out pretty quickly what holds up and what doesn't. That's why I keep coming back to Roka. These aren't just lifestyle sunglasses pretending to be performance gear. I've worn mine training on the range, traveling, and outdoors for long days, and they stay locked in place the entire time. They're incredibly lightweight. The optics are razor sharp with zero glare, and you honestly forget you're even wearing them. But they still look clean enough to wear

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Ready to upgrade your eyewear? Check them out for yourself at Roka.com and use code SRS for 20% off sitewide at checkout. That's ROKA.com and use code SRS. It's amazing. So I grew up in the suburbs like that and I grew up a he-man. fan Sean I was I was big into he man remember that character oh yeah cartoon and when I was young I was watching he man and I I wanted I said I want to look like that one day and I started flipping through the bodybuilding magazines at like 14 years old my mom and dad

bought me some weights and if you remember it might go before your time the weights used to have the sand in them concrete sand I remember the plastic weights and they bought me a a bench set and for the basement and I started started, you know, working out, watch, you know, no internet flipping the magazine, squatting, and bench pressing and curling and everything. And then... So you're in the bodybuilding at a very young age, yeah. Started at like 13, 14 when I was in the house doing it.

And then when I was 16, there was a gym right across the baseball fields from my house, literally, a two-minute walk. And it was in an old barn. And it was called Jay's Body Shop. and the guy lived with his mom and dad at the house. He made this old barn an old school gym. I mean, it had sore cover caps for weights and the old plastic weights like that, you know, pullies through the barn for back and stuff like that.

And I went and signed up for the gym. It was $5 a month. You got a key. You could go anytime, right? And it was in that gym that I met two bikers. And at the time, Sean, I didn't know. I mean, they were all tatted up. I didn't know that they were part of this club called the Hells Hengenchman that we merged with the Hells Angels.

But I didn't know that's what they were part of. I always thought it was kind of weird that they trained in jeans because I always say, you know, bikers never really trained legs back in the day, right? But I did because I wanted to be big everywhere. I wanted to be that bodybuilding big, just big like he man and stuff like that. So I met them too old. They were 10 and 12 years older than me. How old are you at this time?

I was 16, freshly kicked out of high school. What'd you get kicked out of high school for? I socked the principal. You socked the principal? I socked the principal. So me and another friend got into a fight in school with another group of guys from another town. They were busing them into our school from this other town. And they were harassing some girls, you know, because they weren't from our school.

Their school shut down for the year. so they were bringing them by us and they were harassing some girls. So me and one of the friends I grew up with, we got in a fight with these guys. So we were getting kicked out of school. And when I came into the office, my mom was already there. They had called my mom up. She came down, four foot three Italian lady, you know. And, you know, I was more afraid of her in that room than the principal, of course, right?

Because now I'm getting kicked out and I know she's mad. And when we were in the office, the principal said, was kind of speaking disrespect. to my mom. Like, this is what happens when, you know, parents don't know how to raise their kids. And I came from such a, you know, a strict family. My mom and dad were the best raising me, right? It was just me being me. And I just jumped over that desk and socked them and ran out of there because I knew the cops were probably coming right at 16, ran through the neighborhoods, took me like, you know, an hour to get home. You know, out of a 10, 12 minute drive to school, took me an hour to get home. I'm running through the neighborhoods. And when I came through the back fence of my house, like sneaking in, my mom was sitting

there with the town police because the town we grew up when Elsa, my mom was a crossing guard. She later, you know, worked at the bank, ran the concession stand. So they knew her. They're like, hey, Carol, we got to. So they were there waiting for me, you know, didn't, didn't arrest me. But I got expelled from that school. So I said, my mom said to me, you're, I'm going to have to take you 40 minutes away now. You got to go to this new district. And I said, I'm done with the schooling thing. Mom, I don't want to do it no more. So she signed me out actually because, you know,

I was, you know, I was 16 years old. She signed me out. So in the house I grew up and we had a big pool in the yard. So I'm like, this is great. Now I don't have to go to school. I'm just going to lounge in the pool all day, cop some raise, get a tan, hang out with the chicks in the neighborhood.

And it wasn't too long after that. My mom came home with some construction boots. And I go, what's that for? And she goes, you're going to work. I go for what? She goes, you're going to go work with your uncle pouring concrete. Oh, you're not lounging around.

the house all day. You don't want to go to school. You're going to go to work. So I started working and pouring concrete at 16. And back then, I mean, I was born in 69. I'm not great at math, but, you know, somewhere in the young, you know, the 80s, somewhere in there was 69, 79, I'm 20. So yeah, mid-80s. I started, I was making $9, $10 an hour pouring concrete. So I was able to buy my first I rock Z-28. I bought a Z-20, and I bought my first Harley because I liked bikes. I grew up with dirt bikes. So I bought my first Harley. So then when I seen the with the fellows in the gym, the two guys I'm telling you about,

you know, they ride their bikes there, but they never had their patch on. They just came in, cut off shirts and stuff like that. And they took me under their wing, Sean. And not to groom me because I didn't know who they were, but they were like, hey, kid, you're doing this wrong. And keep your back up like this. Do these deadlifts like that. They just were two good, solid guys to me that I really enjoyed and liked, you know.

And it wasn't until about a year or so later that the girl that I have my daughter with, she lived in a town next to Elsp called Crestwood. It was attached. And I was over at her house, you know, visiting her. It was before I had my daughter, right before I had my daughter. And I seen one of the guys named John, and he come pulling down the street. I hear his bike, and he comes, and he makes a turn, and he waves. And I'm like, how did he know I was sitting here?

He's waving to me. Well, he pulled in two doors down. It was Jenny's neighbor. The girl that I have my child with his name is Jenny. It was her neighbor. And I go, wait a minute. You know, John? And she's like, yeah, that's his family's house.

He grew up with us. Why? And I go, because he trains at this gym that I train at. And I know him from in there that are 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 years older than me. So that's when I found out that, you know, he was part of this motorcycle club called the Hells Hengen. Wow. Yeah. So then I was wide open now. My eyes were like because he, I kind of liked 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 John. Do you remember your first tattoo? Yeah, it's under here. It was a tiger. A tiger? It was a tiger, bro. 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 didn't touch any hormones yet until I was 19. So I got a tiger that was big on my arm at the time, but later was 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 the ride and stuff like that. So before we get too far into the... biker stuff yeah you had a child at 16 60 yeah just turned in 17 it's a few months before my 17th birthday so yes later on in 16 um 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 and and i told them 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, uh, I was 16. She was just turning 19, two and a half, three years older than me. So, um, we started that journey to, um, we started that journey to

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, you know, and I didn't really want to have her have any part of that. So, so young, young with the, with the child, which is crazy now because, you know, she's like my mom these days. Because my mom, because my mom, mom passed in 2019 at 90 years old, Sean. 90 years old. Wow. 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 fellows, the fellows personally. But when we would, she would see

us put them jackets on and stuff like that, she'd be like, she just, she just knew that it was, you know, that was the problem there. That 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, so. 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. Man, I'm trying to think that's a good one.

I remember she was late, obviously. She was late on her period and 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. Really? Yeah. No fear.

No, uh-uh. I said, we're going to have a baby then. And back then, we didn't know, you know, we didn't do the testing, a paternity test or, you know, to see what the baby was going to be. We didn't know. We didn't know what we're having. So, you know, we had our little girl named her Danielle. And, uh, and just, uh, we're raising her together through the mures, 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 gammon 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. So financially I was there for my daughter. But, you know, I wasn't walking her down to school dances. stuff like that because i was already deep into what we're talking about so yeah so i i didn't it didn't even dawn on me a second thought to to you know do any abortion or anything like that i said we're having the baby together and you know we're we're going to raise this baby together wow not not even any fear after the like uh uh uh uh during the birth not a hesitation no shan i was

was just i was kind of stoked you know like i didn't 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, I was one of them guys. Well, I'm here and I'm going to 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 in 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, guys at the gym. I met them guys at the gym, yep. And 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? When I was 16. You started riding. Got my first Harley.

Shit. When I was 16, dirt bikes and stuff. And then I got the first Harley when I was 16. So I went down there, seen one of the, 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're you're you're 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 poll the party was open to the public right so it was just you know

just a big just the big party right 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 and my and 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 in 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 carding 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. And then I went back down to their clubhouse, you know, they were getting together. They were having a run. I went down there for the run.

really got to meet the fellows in depth, you know, the guy that was the president for the henchmen and all the, all the crew that was part of them. And I just got along with them very good, you know. And then I remember 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? The 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 you 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, yeah. 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 right. I'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'd 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, pour in 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. He 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 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, how old are you now, Mel and I go, why just seen you last year, right? I'm 20. And I remember him saying, he goes, man, you're going to age terrible. He goes, you look like you're 30.

I 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 Knightheart 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. And I was only a hang around for a

couple months. And they seen that, you know, my head was into this here, you know, and then I became an official prospect. And, you know, and at the time. What does a hang around mean? What is the definition about it? 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 the, you're there, you know, you're kind of doing any kind of work here. I was outside watching the bikes why 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 and nobody was going to get him when he was vulnerable. Same thing as a prospect, you know,

you're just not officially a prospect. You do a hangaround 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 known you're going to become a prospect? That's your goal. Come 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 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 at the time, the club, the Hells Hensman in Chicago, they were having a little squirmish with a, another 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, you know, no shootings, no bombings, nothing what became later, right? It was just a little tit for tat stuff. And as a prospect in being young, I was out and wanting to be a part of that. So I, you know, I remember being out until 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 637 in the morning. But at 20 years old, you know, you're full of it so you can do all that, right? And, you know,

and now I learned what testosterone was at 19 from some of the fellows in the gym. And I started taking some testosterone and a few antibiotics, the decas, and stuff like that. And I grew. My dad was a bigger frame guy, not from bodybuilding, just a bigger frame guy. I always had a good appetite. I was pouring concrete. I was, you know, I was physically just growing. So now, you know, I'm five, been five, ten since I've been like 16. I'm five ten. And I started out, you know, by the time I was 18, I was probably 180 pounds with abs. I looked like a, like a surfer kid, you know. And then I just started growing, testosterone and the in the anabolic 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. Hold on. What was it about, what drew you to them? I mean, I got a couple questions. Yeah. One, what was it about them that really drew you in? I 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 Scots. 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. us, 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 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 ride. in the motorcycles, going to parties, walking in the bars, you know, seeing how people react.

But I seen that tight brotherhood that these guys had, that this henchmen club had with each other. 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 your brother's keeper. You know, your brother's important to you, you know.

You got your brothers 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. One of the guys got, you know, one of the guys got jumped by that, by that DeS Eagle Club. And the next night, they were out, return in 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, you know, I was big and strong. They loved having me around because I wanted to run in and do all that first.

I just seen it 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 weren't getting in fights and shit 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 of family where my dad was so passive, so passive. My mom ran the household, you know, and there was no violence in the household at 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 I always say I got bit by that violence and, you know, running around with the patch on and the womenizing and stuff like that. And then right as I was, right before I was turning 21, I became member. They made me a member.

I think I prospected for just a little under a year. How did they, before we go there, I mean, so they asked you if you wanted to be a hangaround. What is it that you have to do as a hang around to turn into a prospect? Be available, you know, be at the, be on call with them guys that are calling you up. Hey, we'll see you. We're having our meeting next Thursday. say 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? Okay, 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, 637. 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 was, you know, 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 on 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 hangarround period to where they were like, hey, you know, we're going to make you a prospect. We think you got what it takes to be a prospect. You know, now the work starts.

You know, now you've got to be on a beck and call. You know, some members call and you at two in the morning and say, hey, I need you to come down here. My bike broke. Go get the breakdown truck. You know, I couldn't tell them, 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. 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. And she knew what came with that lifestyle, you know, all the nonsense, the violence, and the womenizing. You know, there's a lot of women that come around the motorcycle clubs, right? You know, 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. Let's see how it goes. Well, then not too long after that. She put a tape recorder. I mean, I mean, I 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 hit it under our bed in the house and recorded my phone conversation. Oh, shit. And I was on the phone with a girl. Oh, shit. Running around 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 little Danielle's gonna be okay.

And let's let's let's you don't do this. So we we got divorced, we were married, we got divorced, you know, I think it was about a year. And then 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've seen me prioritizing the club. You know, I did come home and see the family

and I, you know, I was visiting back to my mom's house and stuff. I didn't live there, obviously, no more had my own place. But they were, you know, I think concerned. You know, I remember my dad sitting down with me and saying, son, you know, I'm never going to tell you what to do. He said, but, you know, I hate to see you end up in the penitentiary or, you know, getting something happening to you out late at night. You know, 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, you know, financially seeing her and everything like that, you know. It wasn't until I finally, you know,

made member. And, you know, when you make a member, it's got to be 100% of the vote. So everybody in that room, and I believe at the time there was about, it had to be about 2830 guys that were in that Hells Henschenchman chapter in Chicago, 100% have to vote for you. If one says, it's 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, you know, what was going on. And then you fix things from there and, you know, 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 for your, for your, you know, to be full member. Again, they'd vote on it. And, and then I got the 100% vote.

Yeah. 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? What do you get in there? Call you in the room. Well, they kind of, they played a like a little to trick on me. So I got in there. I was at my vest on. And when you, when your prospect, you just have the bottom rocker. Our said Illinois. And on the front, we had a tag that said prospect, right? You didn't have the hell's henchman in the center patch, just the bottom. So I came in the room, look at around the room. They said, hey, they want you in the room when the guys came down and 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 he goes, hey, we're going to 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 it. I got you. Just jump on the bike. You know, pop it in gear, right? So he 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, ah, he goes, you look like that dude, man, that road warrior dude. He goes, wait, 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.

He goes, I'm not calling you, Melvin. I'm calling you Rhodes. And that's how that name stuck. Oh, shit. Everybody called me Road from that day on. That was my nickname. through the whole decade of the clubs, you know, road. So 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 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. Nice knowing you, sending it down the road. And I said, you are, huh? And they said, yeah.

And I said, 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, ooh, 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. We call it the spook. It was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, a skull head with the, you know, 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 of course, we got annihilated that night. Partied for a few days. I one got my, you know, my, my Hells Hensman 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, two hours 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. And I loved them guys. And I loved being around them and that camaraderie in 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? or the 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. And 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 bikes 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. Wow. 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 D.C. Eagles, you know, five, six prominent clubs. So 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. I always had a ball paint 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 the 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 know, you're not doing that drinking and doing recreational drugs. How 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, in all total, I'd say there was probably about maybe 75, 80 guys in the Hells Henschman and them three charters that we had. What kind of backgrounds do these guys have? A lot of military guys, a lot of former military guys and blue collar guys, working class guys, you know. The president that was before me and the henchmen. And he was a mechanic at a big trucking company, a Mac truck.

It's a big mechanic and stuff. So 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 clubs, you know, blue collar though. Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, I did, the stuff always really interested me, especially when I started contracting for, for the stuff. started contracting for CIA started looking into all this stuff in it 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 hell's angels and guys were you know and the bomber squadron in World War II right in the planes and you see they had the hell's angels death from above they called it and 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 nineteen forty eight in san bernino california that's the 148 is the birth of the hell's angels

and San Bernardino, they call it Burdue, California. And, 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, in 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

fellow's different neighborhoods, different spots, you know. If I was, uh, maybe in, grew up in Tennessee, I would have looked up to the outlaws, you know. They were down here back then, you know, so I just happened to be part of the henchmen and, you know, we'll get into that, we merge with the Hells Angels, but, uh, yeah, that was the background of all these guys. It was all the same. I said we're all likely manner, but that patch and that structure separates us. And sometimes that blurred the lines of what, you know, you see now and became them big, like the column wars, but became them big skirmishes with each other, you know, all over

egos. I mean, did anybody or does, it's just so similar to the military. It seems it's, it's, I'm not trying to, you know, compare notes here or backstories or are they but it's just i don't know the draw seems very similar to what attracted me to the seal teams that tattoos drinking womanizing bar fights wars like it's just you know it's all it's the culture uh is very similar for sure and does it do 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 at 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've seen a lot of guys come into the club and not make it, you know,

I just couldn't mentally, you know, run them late hours or, you know, be part of that. And, 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.

They're running around, the women, the partying. and the red carpet's rolling out to us, but you're not seeing when one of our guys' daughters is jumping up in the casket, rubbing her father's here for the last goodbye. And we laugh and joke about it to this day, Sean, with my friend Jamie and Chuck. And I say, yeah, thank God that, you know, God had his hand on us all. I said, because you guys would have been doing the penitentiary shuffle with me later at life, right? And, you know, I've 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 the big play coming you know especially when we decided we all agreed that we were going to merge and you know join the hell's 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 oh 1335 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 outlaws. They were Chicago on the top rocker and the bottom rocker said outlaws. They only had, 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 one percenters there. Who were the premier outlaw gangs at the time? So the outlaws, the Hells Henshman, another club called the D.C. Eagles. There was a black club called the Hells Lovers. There was a club called the Wheelman,

the Ombres, which they got absorbed by the Outlaws later once we made our play and became 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 going to make an alliance here. You're with us or you're against us, you know? So what I'm asking is where I'm going with this is did you look at any of the other clubs to see cultural differences, what they stand for versus like these guys stand for?

There has to be some kind of difference, correct? Um, yeah, 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, intimately, right? I didn't 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 going to go to this club and that club. No, I'm just saying 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'd 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 of 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? So that's the enforcer, right? It's the enforcer, yeah, yeah. I think, you know, the size I was and, you know, could somewhat fight.

And, you know, I wasn't Chuck Ladell at the time or anything like that. But I can throw my hands, right? And just being around constantly all the time and them guys seeing me in action from the prospecting days and once I got my patch when we were still fighting with the D.C. goes back of the day and

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. Just describe the scene what you felt. So the fellas got jumped. I wasn't part of that one when about four or five guys got

jumped by about 15 guys. And then they came back to the clubhouse and then we had a meeting the next day going over everything that happened. We 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 fellow 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've got the sap gloves on and the ball peop. hammer we're gonna beat these guys knocked their teeth out of their mouth here right and that's what it's gonna 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 shit out of people you got in a couple fights in school and now you're cutting phone lines

and beating the shit out of people with ball pain hammer and fucking gloves with bivis 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 brothers. So we're out, adrenaline up, you know, I'm on the notch. I'm not partying doing anything like that. So I'm completely just full of testosterone, right? And, 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 bar, we were in a van. All of us in a van. So everybody kind of knew what they were doing.

this guy's going to watch this door. Nobody leaves. Nobody comes in. There'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 are 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, you know, 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. It 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, you know. And then this took to when we were leaving, when they were like, all right, let's go. Let's go.

Everybody out. You know, I was the. you know, newly in the club and 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 took me. How bad do you fuck 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 fucked up are? Yeah, this incident here and they called the am the ambulance had to come and take them. broken legs, teeth out. You know, the ball peen 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? 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? That particular incident with this club, we weren't on that, we weren't there with them. This was just the fighting, the getting each other like that, mangling each other up. up. It never came to the shooting, the bombings, which we encountered later, as we'll, you know, as we'll get into. But so is this pretty common? Or I guess, 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. It, well, or just not with us. Not with us. Yeah, not with us in the DC goes. It wasn't to that level yet. There was no, nobody got shot, no bombings yet. It was just all hand-to-hand stuff. Gotcha. You know. And, 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 hunt around and see who's who, you know, see who's out and stuff like that. So, 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 you'd be like, what's up? Hey, there's three of them here. Girls were out. See ya. And we get in the, we get whatever we were. You know, if we were on our bikes, we 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 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, we, we, we, we, we, me and 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 you fiend for that i fiend for it that's why i say now i don't dip my toe in any of that you know it's hard for me to when i am telling the stories that to go back because obviously, you know, where I'm at in life and what we're doing and, you know, 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 the 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 the bike clubs weren't bodybuilding. They weren't big like there were some big farm fed dudes, of course, and, you know, 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, you know, so I was very well. well known now in this in the city of Chicago of what I was doing. Did you ever get your ass kicked?

Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about the first time that happened. Yeah. So we were, we were in this bar and a couple of the guys 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 him, ax handler 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. And 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 of 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 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 or an axe handle. So if the team comes in, if the other team comes in the door and we,

see them running in like that, I'm pulling out. 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. We'll talk about that. That got into a whole other 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 felt the ass kicking, you know, so I knew both sides of it. But it didn't deter me. I was like this. And, 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.

Anybody that's been to fucking 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 that's- One more up. Yeah.

You're going to retire soon? No, one more employment. Yeah. One more. 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. cycle, getting up going to work at, you know, 637 in the morning, kind of getting taxing on me now, right? And I'm starting to think like this is, you're getting to be a little bit of a burden here. But I need money, right? You need money. I to pay your dues. You've got to be a, 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 knows 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 have that luxury. I wasn't, you know, we were in the bars for our mission.

But 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 to sit down with my boss who was like, I'm dear friends with him today. And I told him, Merrill, I said, I'm going to give you four weeks. 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 I don't, I don't have the luxury of giving up the hours to work. So I'm getting into this trade. So once I was making that money, you know, a thousand bucks a week, 1,500 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 I never, it wasn't never about the money to me, Sean. It's like today. It's like I look back and I say that all the time, God always had his hand on me, even though I didn't know it. And you know, the Bible says you can't

serve God and money, you know, because you become a slave to one, right? You 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 Irochs 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 it's making enough money to go live that 1% or 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. I 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 in 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 we one of the guys that was

in the henchmen 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 hells 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, they were a lot bigger than us. Worldwide. We said we had the three chapters. They had chapters all over the world, you know, out of the country and 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 territory. The angels had never had been into the Midwest

until us. Gotcha. Yeah. So, um, so now comes that we're, 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 their guys and our guys and stuff were intermingling and talking. And then one day they sat down and they said, hey, what would you guys think about rolling the hell's henchman into the Hells Angels? And we were like, yeah, it sounds pretty cool. I mean, you know the Hells Angels, the number one.

Oh, shit. They're just like that. You're like, yeah. Yeah, fuck it. We like that. There's no, I mean, I would think that would be somewhat offensive. I mean, maybe not. They're a global organization.

You've got three chapters. But I would think there would be some. club pride that's like why the fuck will we want to do that yeah 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 um but we all you know the guys that we were talking to the the angels we were the younger guys and we were like yeah that's pretty cool you know the the hell's angels the number one you know the biggest club right back back then and they were the biggest club absolutely 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, North Carolina and stuff like that. So 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 club. And, and some of them came to our club. And Bobhaus and presented it to us at a meeting, and we took it to a vote. And the majority said yes. And the guys that didn't want to anymore, they just hung it up. And they just exited from the henchmen because once we, you know, we had a prospect for the Hells Angels. They just didn't give us the patch. We prospected with our colors on, our Hells Hensman patch on. You had to re-prospect. We had a re-prospect. Does that mean you're on FNG all over again?

Yeah. They treat you the same way or they just 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 Hensmen 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. They've been mortal enemies since the early 70s fighting constantly on different coasts.

What year is this? This is 92. Oh, God. 1992. E991, so 89, 99. I'm now in the club for three years. Sergeant of Arms for the Hengman, courting, you know, with 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 Hells Angels, you know, them boys ain't just going to roll over and say, welcome to the city. It's going to 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 so we had a, we prospect it for them. Once we made it official and they made it official, then we started our prospecting period for them. We're in our own, our own jackets, you know, our hell's henchmen colors.

But now we're really traveling. How do you prospect, but they don't even have a club where you guys are at. So what are they, the sense of, you? supervisors down or something. That too, but we traveled to them. So you, you moved 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, you 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 like a respect thing because we were a known. It's like changing fucking teams and 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 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 were you seeing? So 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 run it like we do. Our shit's better.

Nothing. We liked everything. We liked it. Yeah, we liked what we've seen. Different guys, meeting different guys, the brotherhood that they had, you know, 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 because 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, when the two clubs came together to discuss it, and then it's just the henchman, what kind of, I mean, what are the pros and cons you guys are going over? As just the henchmen team?

Yeah. Should we do this? Yeah, yeah. We were talking about, you know, what the outlaws were going to, how they were going to feel and what we were doing. But, you know, we said this is what we want to do, and we're not going to let anybody stop us from doing it.

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 whole, 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 did you guys like so much, is what I'm asking. Do you just like the bigger club, the bigger network? Yeah. The being a part of the Hells Angels, the premier motorcycle gang in the fucking world. Yes. Or,

There's other incentives. Yeah. No, I mean, it was structured the same. We, you know, we've structured the same, the same kind of mentality. But now we're part of the biggest motorcycle club in the world. Oh, God. And, you know, like, I remember sitting with one of the angels, and he's like, man, we're giving you guys the world. You guys are giving us the Midwest.

And, you know, I 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 now that the word is out that we're a prospecting for the hell's angels, the hellas got all of us because, you know, they knew some of the henchmen. The henchmen knew them. We, you know, 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 or five, six that are guys, four or five, six of us. And they said, hey, we heard a rumor. I heard a rumor you guys are going Hell's Angel. And I wasn't the president. I was a Sergeant Armstrong, so our president at the time said, it's not a rumor. We're prospecting for the Hells 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. He 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, shoo, I'm thinking, man, we better tie our shoes up. This is going to get real here. You know, they're pissed off. They were so mad. 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, we thought we were ready for what was going to come, but, uh, we did not know what was going to 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, 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 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 had that ongoing feud from, I think, 1970 on,

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, say, oh, let's go out looking for these guys tomorrow now. We just continued to be prospects and learn the Hell's 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, and 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 Matthias. 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, is that youngster.

he took help took me under his wing and showed me that brotherhood way and everything like that. He 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? No, 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. Yeah, I 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 him, 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 sent something was wrong.

You know, he sent something. And he was a big dude, Monty was a big workout guy. And when he came in and said, oh, he's out, these spark plugs. can work they're not going to 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. Moni was able to turn the gun around on him, but as he was firing shun, 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 him. 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. And when the coroners got there, by the time everybody got there, Monnie was drained out of blood. So as he was running back through, Monty trips him again.

He falls into Monty's blood, it's all over the tile floor. And he grabs another, he grabs that screwdriver again and finishes the job off. You know, holy shit. And, you know, you're going to speak with Chris Bayless

tomorrow, you know, and you're going to hear a lot more of the story from his and, you know, the retired ATF agent. But 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 of the guys flipped and put the story together, right?

But, so Moni was the first one. So I remember getting that call, getting a page 911, stopping at a pay phone. And the fellow's telling me, Monty just, they just found Monty murdered at his shop. So we all jumped in the vehicle. got up to Rockford. The place was, you know, we couldn't get near the place with all the police presence and everything. And 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 Moni, who was, you know, the known leader. You know, Moni was the one that was pushing with the rest of us to become angels. And, you know, up there in Rockford, and they had Milwaukee and the state line guys for the outlaws. They surrounded him right there. You know, they had him, 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 went from, escalated from this, because there was a few fights before. Just a few, you know, little bar fights with us and the outlaws now as we're still henchmen. But that was pretty quick. We didn't even have our Hells Angel patch. So Moni was the first Hells Angel made. he was the first one. He got buried with his tells angel colors. Why, we were still prospects. Shit. Yeah. 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

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You don't want to miss this on the big screen. That's hillsdale.edu slash revolution. Welcome to Hollywood versus reality. They do it, right? What does he do in the movies? Tell me if I'm doing this wrong because I don't watch any of the shit. A little flick like that, right? Seems pretty cool.

It is pretty cool. Gotta silence it. In another lifetime, I did gun reviews for a living. Proprietary magazines. Supposedly the best engineering in the fucking world. When that breaks, you're... And now we're bringing them back. It does look pretty fucking cool.

I got to 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. Yes. 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. 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 gasket. 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. And when we were getting ready to close the casket, we put the patch over him.

We take his vest and put it over him, shut with the Hells Angel part up and shut the casket. And it was me and a few guys up there. And, you know, his daughter, his wife was there, is the little girl. And she leaned over her dad's casket, and she was rubbing his hair. crying tears in our eyes, tears in our eyes. I'm just thinking to myself, man, we did this, right? This 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 fellas, there was hundreds of Hells Angels there from around the country, hundreds. And I remember telling my guys, like, let's give them one by the end of the week. it's changed 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 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 them I mean you know we of course 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 didn't know we were in the middle of the hornet's nest. You know, like I said, we didn't know what was going to happen, but I knew it wasn't going to be a peaceful thing. We just didn't know how far it was going to escalate, you know. And then we became a group of guys that had to go, you know, retaliate for our brother, and we couldn't do it by this no more. That was out the door. going in on the bars with them was just no more.

So now we had to, 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. One of their, by a few of our guys got him on the highway, which we 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 knew it was happening. and I cleaned the mess up with the truck.

I had the truck, you know, my guy's truck repainted and brought it to a buddy, but mine's body shop and changed the color on that truck today, have it out in the street in the morning. So I obviously, they knew, I knew about the crimes because, you know, 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 RICO conspiracy. got caught in any of the acts. I never got caught with any of the drug transactions. I just, it was all the people coming in before me saying, this is what I did with Mel. This is what he was

involved in. You know, less time you get out of jail free car, not get out of it, but less time for them guys that were cooperating witnesses against stuff that was going on in the RICO. So how long after this did you patch over? Um, we, 1994, December 2nd, I believe is the date at 1994 when the Hells Henshman became Hells Angels. What was that like? What was that? 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 Hells Angels came in with our, with our patches and stuff, We had people there that were sewing, sewing machines and everything like that.

And we took them Hensman vests off and I had a new vest and everything and sewed the Hells Angel patches on our stuff. And we were officially Hells Angels December 2nd, 1994. What did they say to you? Congratulations. 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 Hell's 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. And here we are, you know, the three chapters, you know. 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 got to jump on them, ball peen hammers, beat them, beat them a couple of them up with axe handles. And we had to, you know, one in room, we had to, you know, do that. And we always just to say to each other, we're not trying to go to prison. We knew it was there. I used to tell the new, the prospects coming in. Not that we had a lot coming in at them days, you know, nobody was wanting to do.

step into that scene, not a lot of people. But I used to say, if you're afraid to go to the penitentiary, you're 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, I'm the poster child here. Because now I became the president shortly after we patched into the Hells 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 henchman, you know, he had 20-something years in the club already. And 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. What are you traveling around for? For meetings and stuff now. Okay.

Yeah, for meetings and, you know, being, you know, if they have officer meetings. meetings, you know, I was going as one of the officers, you know, taking the president to the henchmen, you know, going, me and him going together. I was a sergeant of arms. I was his security. Meeting all the different angels from around, you know. I got tight with a former, a former Hells Angel by the name of Chuck Zito from New York. He ran the New York crew. I was going out to the West Coast all the time, you know, got to meet, you know, no Sunny Barger and George Christie and that whole crew that ran that West crew, you know, the, the, you know, the, the, you know, the, the, you know, the, the. 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 they had a legacy with the Hells Angels. So, 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 thing.

different, 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, I talked to George here and there from time to time still, you know, throw him a text and stuff like that. You know, I seen him three, four years back when I did John Bernthel's podcast because John, is up in Ohio and it's, you know, connected to Ventura there 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, I 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 fucking 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. It 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 being beheaded in our faith, because that's what it says in the end times. You're going to either take the marker to beast or you're going to 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 be in that eternal paradise with this body. A lot of my friends ask me, no, you know, because, you know, they're trying to, 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 peck tears, no 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. for guys like us that know the Lord to not shine it through, which you do. I mean, a lot of people tell me, a lot of people are attracted to you in 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 Los Angeles. Okay. So now...

You're getting ready to... So you were just going into... You're going to 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 going to 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? And we took it to a vote. And I said, well, 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 he says, we want you to be the president. 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 just the perfect fit. And I was like, wow, okay, honored and ripped the sergeant of armed tag off and sold the president tag on me and um oh boy um that was uh 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 for 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 and 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 called him Ford by he got murdered. He was sitting out in front of his work. He drove a truck, big dump truck. He was sitting out in front of his work, reading the paper, drinking a coffee. And a car came by and stopped and unloaded a fully automatic, like AK, I believe it was, right into his whole. head. Shit. Jawbone was somewhere laying on the street. Just, you know, brutal right there. So I got that call. We got that call. Went over, you know, tried 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 by. So, you know, we're trying to figure all that out and to just 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. I said we was 13 of us, 8 to 10 in Rockford,

8 to 10 in South Bend. Then 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 to them there. There's been a slaughter right there right? So we had to go and do the old

art of war and do some things through the alleys as I say we had to get you know do some the underhand stuff, the shooting on the highway, the shooting in Indiana and we just had to we had to do like that it wasn't too much that we could you know we'd put some crews together other hells angels would come in

from out of town and we have you know 60 70 guys and we'd just go now we'd go hit some swap meets and pound the street like that. But when everybody went back home, it was just us. It was just us 13 guys trying to make sure there wasn't another Moni 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. You know, maybe we'd run into them. Maybe we wouldn't.

You know, if we ran into them in the bar, 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. You're going to do that on the highway or in a backyard or somewhere where you can, you know, possibly get away with it, right? So 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. I 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 an addict for all that, the girls, and I needed that whole lifestyle. So 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 in club? There was no Hells Angels 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 Hells Angels. They had to get us immediately because why are you going to let us grow? So what's your goal?

Our goal was... I mean, obviously you can't kill every outlaw. There's hundreds of them. Right. Right. Yeah. Our goal. You guys?

20, 30, 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 become the hell's angels to sit in the clubhouse. Like I keep saying, we're just, that was our goal. It was like we had a, it was a balancing act.

So your goal is to survive and grow. Survive and grow. And. Not initiate violence against the outlaws. We, you know, we were, at first we were trying not to, but when they, when they brought it to that violent level, you know, there's, they're keeping scoring at one percent of world, right? Mm-hmm.

And if it just keeps happening on one side and they keep doing stuff to us, guess these other clubs are going to join the forces and say, hey, well, we'll, well, we'll, we'll, we're 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 the decade i spent in the club i i i i i've been in the club i i i i i i've been I sponsored one guy.

Are 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 into Chicago crew. Holy shit. Guys weren't wanting to sign up on the 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 even know 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 good to see us where were you guys back you know what i mean and i you can't take that stance right but um yeah So it was we weren't really grown. So our really objective was to keep ourselves safe and to go out and make that name. And that one percent of our 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, we're, 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, 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 the one to murder or do a couple to murder,

whoever's willing to do the most violence is going to be the dominant one. And 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 them. 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 brought to them? I didn't want that on my watch, right? So, you know, I had to learn that violence in that type of way. And like I said, there's no playbook in that one. I didn't have nothing to read.

I 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 penit and the graves, you know, the graveyards. Let's put our differences aside and see if we could practice the good neighbor policy. but that was that happened in 98 so from 94 to 98 that four years was going shootings 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 hit 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, you know, we were all, you know, everybody was jumping up and down. After all that time and hitting five of our houses and coming up, I mean, at one of the guys' houses, they were scraping a mirror to get some cocaine off it. I mean, taking specks off the mirror and stuff like that. The guns they had in his house were good. The 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 misdemeanor. 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 the once the once the the shootings really didn't do it the murder of money 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 it had to be the end in the early 95 i think that was shown the first debt bombing how 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 Chicago called Grand Avenue. A busy street, a two-way street. It was like 5 or 5.30 in the evening. By the grace of God, nobody got hurt or killed.

Nobody was in our clubhouse. They thought there was. 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. And so they thought somebody was there. They were out sightseeing in the city, seeing the different sites 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.

They went into the gas station and pulled this lithium piece of paper. paper out to start that timer. How about that guy driving that thing and drove it, you know, 90 seconds down the street? Holy shit. Right, Sean, 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 nuts as big. 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, and that went off on the, and, middle of the week, five something, six, five, thirty six o'clock in evening on the busiest street. The 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, crack the foundation. It 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 with 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 trades towers,

but from the bottom, you know, when they blew it from the parking garage. I 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 parking garage, and then ours, the third largest domestic bomb.

100 pounds of C-4. 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 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 there everything or air drums 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 friend 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 go what And I turned on the news and I seen Grand Avenue. And there was an explosion that rocked a rock to, rock to city, blah, 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 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 it on the news right i said what happened and an explosion went off at our building and did a pipe bust he goes no somebody put it in a bomb on in the 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 okay and i said uh 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 okay we walked 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 i was like okay so now washington flew in janet rino sent the whole team from washington and then they seized then took over the place now you know for active crimes and they were you know swiping it 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 on 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, you know, the upstairs had a big bar area. with a band stage and everything like that. Nothing was left. The bottles of booze all knocked over. That concussion just blasted everything, ripped a stage in half.

You know, the concussion went all the way up. So, you know, it was a mess there. And so that was the first one. Are they sending any communications in the interim? Who's that, John? The outlaws. No. No messages to you guys.

No talks. No talks. What are you in? 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 we're 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 guys' cars from Rockford, one of his trucks. Remote starter. We all had remote starters. After that bomb, I had a Corvette, remote starter, looking underneath the car with a mirror had all the spots. You know, I had it easy. I had a vet. It was loaded to the ground. These guys had pickup trucks. This guy, 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.

Shit. He lives. He lives. Dyes a couple times on the way to the hospital. He flat lines. They bring him back to life. Vains 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 them there alone, 24 hour around the clock because we're thinking they're going to come in and finish him off. So that was, that was a bomb number two. And we were like, man, they're taking this away from us. They're taking a fight away from us now.

Now they're really getting impersonal, putting these bombs and just, you know, walking away. And how are you and your guys handling this? I mean, I would imagine he'd be doing some kind of. counter surveillance on the way home, bouncing houses, surfing couches, fucking whatever you can to make yourself not time and place predictable. For sure. I've used Cash App for a long time. So when I saw you could buy Bitcoin on it, that actually caught my attention.

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I was still going to the gyms in 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 walking the gym, they all knew where I was. 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, you know, pay this favor back to them, you know, with the second bombing that they did, you know.

And that's what we did. I'd found somebody that was a former military dude, and we knew him very well. And, you know, he was in another smaller club and wanted to become a hell's angel. And I knew the background through some of our guys in the club. And I said, okay, can you build something that's going to do that same thing to their clubhouse? And he said, yeah. And I said, okay, that's your gig. Get that thing done, you know.

You still got a prospect. 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 ended up putting a bomb on their clubhouse in chicago that not a hundred 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 and 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 seen that we were in the same playing field as them you know um yeah I just 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 people that had our support t-shirts on, you know, the friends and, you know, that would come and, you know, that would come and, you know, you know, buy a support shirt at the at the parties we never put hells angels on anything that went out to the public so it would be to support your local 81 you know eight be in the h in the a be in the first letter of the alphabet a h be in 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 the same thing. Starting to grab their guys up, letting them feel that. They took a couple smaller clubs in and they said, you're going to prospect for us and we're going to do the same thing. You guys will become outlaws. And we went and 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 a care in the world. Now they're prospecting for the outlaws. They weren't used to that.

that lifestyle, that one percenter, they weren't living it. But the outlaws were growing in numbers because they were taking 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 absorbing? You 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 at 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, 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 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 peen 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? 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 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 paint hammer, and you're swinging that across their jaw and stuff.

You know, you're getting the job done. So we always had them ball paint hammers, the handles, fiberglass handles sticking out of our back pockets. I used to tuck it into a bandana so it would 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 9 that were sewn into like that and a knife and stuff just why a 45 and a 9 I liked the 9 back in the day because it held so many in the clip and it was fast and that 45 was was the 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 I always carried two you know what else did you carry all bein hammer a 45 and a nine nine and then a knife a sheath and a knife that i could pull out this way one of one of the guys uh in the club taught me some knife hand-to-ham knife stuff you know to where i when i grabbed the 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 and 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 so 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 you know I thought I had a strong punch when I was just the meathead, you know, 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, you know, 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. It's funny because I became friends with some of them guys after I exited that lifestyle in the truth. Well, guys, the outlaws. The outlaws. I became friends with some. So that thing was, I think that was 98. I think we sat down and said, let's settle our differences. 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? And they had a job to do it 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, uh, 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 Bayliss, 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. If 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 it 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 going to 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, 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 your hair.

He goes, come on out. I want to see you and say hi. So as the cop 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 him from the gym, the Mount Law 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 and one of them guys in that van, flipped and worked for the government, he told him 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. When I'm going to go, you know, they got me right there. they all had automatic weapons and they were going to gun me down right there. Shit.

Yeah. You know, and then later, you know, about probably four or five years ago, I became really good friends with one of their former sergeant of arms. And 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 have best. better get the jump on him because he's prepared to go at any, 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. I 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 we went and met for some lunch and we started laughing and joking and telling some old stories. He's been gone from the outlaws for many years. And it was crazy to hear that because, you know, he told me, he goes, Mel, you were the guy, man. We had our sights set on you. We just knew we had to, it had to be that perfect timing. I mean, we couldn't just waltz into that gym. We knew what it was going to be.

I'm like, oh, yeah, I 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, 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 in the, he was the sergeant of arms in the height of that, the height of that war. So, and then he just passed, I don't even know if it's been a year, Sean. He passed for some, from some lung cancer. but I got to be close with him. 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. And I told him right before he passed, I said, if your boys ever need anything, because they're like in their 30s, 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 talked to his kids for every holiday. Oh, that's cool, man. Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of surreal to hear what, you know, both sides were, what was going on in our minds at that time. I'll bet it is. Yeah. Man.

Wow. 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 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 $2 donation or whatever it was. A mixed drink is a $5 donation and they'd get tickets. We put out a calendar every year. The Hells Angels put out a calendar every year with a member on the cover. I 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 memory, you know, stuff like that, trinkets like that. So the club was making money for the club as far as, you know, you know, in our bank account. The individual guys, whatever they wanted to do. A lot of the, I told you, a lot of the guys had jobs. you know 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 mack truck all the way to to he exited you know or totally retired from there what about arms dealing drug dealing 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 a punch a clock and so i was able to get my hands in that underworld with so is it's a little bit of Is that for you personally or is that for the club? Yeah. So we paid dues every week for the, you know, the club to keep, you know, the lights on, the air condition running the building and everything like that.

I believe the dues were $30 a week back then, you know, $30 we paid the dues and that went into the treasury. If guys had to travel, our expenses were taking 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 hire 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 never do that. Whoever was doing anything on the side, that was their own money. So the club funds were actually, they were procured legitimately.

Yeah. Not for illegal activity. 100%. Like I said, from the parties, the shirts, the membership dues. and everything like that. You know, 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, you know, I was just into being with the women and hanging out with them. I never, none of us ever did the prostitution stuff at all. What kind of drugs were you dealing?

I was into, with the cocaine. I had a cocaine source that was outside of the club. Nothing from, you know, they weren't members of the club. And the people I was unloading it to weren't in a motorcycle club. I had some guys out east that were, they were taking them kilos of cocaine and automatic weapons. We were getting them, um, SKS Chinese rifles back in the day. How would you get them? Um, from a guy that was sourcing them out.

And, you know, we were told they were falling off a truck. But we had a guy that, uh, balling off the truck scene. We had a guy that was, he got his hands on him, not in the club, an outside guy that I happened to get to meet. And 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 when I remember. So it was kind of a short, like a shotgun type deal. And you can hold it like that and shoot, shoot that way. So we were getting them by the crates back in the day.

So I had my hand into that. Where would you keep them? We 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 a tax on them and sold the crates and stuff like that, you know.

I had a great steroid connect. Who would you sell them? I sold them to 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 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, of four. 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. Hells henchmen slash the Angels at the time.

When Chris got in, he got in when we were still henchmen. Wow. And they wanted to pull them out when things got crazy through the war. You know, when things with the bombings and stuff like that, they were, you know, like, hey, well, 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 I remember one of them, and 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. So 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. I said, okay, call me when you can. If you guys get locked up and you need bond, you know, give me a call me. We'll get to get the treasury together and see what's going on.

And 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 didn't, you know, I kind of thought it was weird, but I didn't know that. That was the, 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 was knowing who he was oh yeah he brought him he brought him in he got him he got himself in a jam i believe and chris knows the story better than me. I knew the guy a little bit, the guy that was up in Rockford. I didn't know him great. He was, 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 and when they were telling me that they had this, his name was Grubb,

that they had him up their prospecting and I was like, how old is he? And they were like, oh, 46 or 47. And I'm like, what's he having a midlife crisis? Like, tell him to buy a Corvette. Like, does he know what he's doing? It's 40-something years old. He wants to come into this club on what we're doing, but that's what Chris's in. And he knew Chris was the agent and brought him around and vouched for him. So he was previous because Grub 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 or because we grew up in towns next to

each other. You know, you've seen the sizzle reel. I showed you. We grew up right 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 grubbed 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. So 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 do they know and what we're doing? How do they know to knock you guys over on the highway like that? Are they following us? You know, it was just, but later we find out that, you know, 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 were 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 knew we were coming. and they know we were coming. Wow. Yeah.

What was the first time you met Chris? Funny story. So I never seen him, obviously. He 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 had a go. And he said he came up to him to me and introduced himself,

hey, Chris, prospect, Brockford, because that's what you had. do to the members as you were a prospect. You had introduced yourself to every member. You know, I probably didn't pay attention. Hey, how you doing? Good to meet you. That's about as far as it went. But so the first time I seen him is our doors got kicked in. Four of us on that RICO of the morning. Two Rockford Hells Angels, me and my sergeant of arms from Chicago kicked our doors in. He wasn't at my door, my raid. He was out grabbing the Rockford boys because he knew him. So they got to find out on the spot that Chris Decker was his last name was actually Chris Bayless undercover ATF. 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 teams there. And there they're seeing Chris who they thought was, you know, their prospect. So we get down, they bring everybody to the federal courthouse in Peoria, which was the, 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 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, you know, sat with them. They give us the indictment. We're in our street closed because they just knocked our doors and braided my house at about 515 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 this thick, Sean, right? And I'm looking at all this stuff and you're shooting on the highway, the bombing, the attempted murder hair, 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 04, December of 2004. So now they bring us in the court. 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 fed yet. And I'm looking up at the U.S. attorney standing at his desk, you know, before we start the actual hearing. And I see this 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 that?

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, oh, his name is Chris Bayliss. He goes, he was our prospect. No, do you remember him?

And I said, no, he goes, he was a prospect for us for a while. And we just found out he's a federal agent. 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, you know, we always knew that there was the RICO stuff that they could get us with, right? Well, this guy just was a picture

And he had a million pictures. He had an obsession with me. He had a million pictures of me, parties, here and there. But he 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 Chris, 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 him 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 fed. They weren't talking 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. It was first time. Layed eyes on him. Shit.

Yeah. Damn. Crazy. So we were. Talking about the bombings, the attempted murders, the murders. How are you keeping a relationship with your daughter during all this? Ooh, from a distant, Sean. I was keeping 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, visiting with her at my mom's house or wherever, you know. She was living with my ex, Jenny, at the time. So, you know, seeing her when I can, you know, financially, like I said earlier, was there for her. But I didn't want to, I didn't know where it was going to go.

You know, there's always an unwritten rule. No homes and no families. I was going to ask that. I said, yeah, it was an unwritten rule, no homes and no families, you know. And it got violated a little bit on their end, you know. They beat up one of our guy's girlfriends. That was a bartender. They walked into a bar and surrounded the bar and took,

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, you're 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. We 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. And 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, a 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. If we caught you, we caught you, we caught you. You know, 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 the spot and I always had just, they had this good chicken and steak there. Walked in there and I seen one of the outlaws with his girl and his kid and a kid. You don't know if it was his wife, his girlfriend, but there was three of them and there was a little kid, the 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. And 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, what would they would have did? Maybe they would have got me?

I don't 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. 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. If he was there by himself, Sean, it was on the spot, on site. That's, that was our role. 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, and that, you know, 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 the girlfriends I've had. You know, we were talking earlier and you heard the story. I had multiple girlfriends that were living in different houses, obviously different spots. 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 going to see me and say, hey, we're going to take the shot no matter what. And then here I'm telling their family or whatever, you know, that, you know, I just didn't want that on 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 covering You don't want to ride nobody Because you don't have to cover your patch up But 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

can I think about that? You don't talk about it too much. You know, something 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. And we tell some campfire stories, you know, sitting around. And, uh, but, um, you know, it's nothing that I'm, 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, man, what did we do here? I think about Bonnie. I think about Ford by. I think about Roger who's still living. I believe he's still in the club, but, you know, we'll get 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.

And that's obviously a part of the journey of my old part, right? And like the Rock says, like Dwayne, we call him DJ, like DJ says, Mel, you have to go to that part of your mind to tell, because we knew you back then, 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, uh, that deepness out of me because I, I think I block it out. And, you know, but then, you know. Do you remember the first time that you put a head out on somebody? Um, I don't think it was really like, hey, we were, 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 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 and 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 to happen a nightclub in the city of chicago i was coming in with my patch on with my crew know if sands or butts i wanted to hang out i wanted to be in the street scene, the night scene. Then we had to 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 in the house for the night or relaxed or caught up on some sleep, maybe, you know. Do you remember the first time somebody was killed because of an order you'd put out? Well, I'd like to say it like this.

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 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 is 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 in the streets. We wouldn't allow that to happen. You were coming out. You were participating. You were, or, 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-connevled 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 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. You 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, 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 and 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. A lot of people probably seen what went down, you know, so I got that. 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, and 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, you know, ordering it. And then cleaning the crime scene up with that. getting the truck repainted and stuff. So as much as we were trying to cover every base of not getting a RICO indictment, it's just pretty impossible. You know, like I said, no, nothing, 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, you know, if you're in the club with me and me and me and Sean go out and we find out that there's, you know, a couple of the other team in this bar, and we beat him with ball pain hammers. stuff. We didn't do that because of Sean Ryan and Mel Chancy. We did that for the enterprise, which is the hells 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. Oh, God. 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 first got this RICO indictment and I had a really good lawyer, my lawyer was my friend since I'm like 21 years old. He became a really prominent lawyer. So that's who I used. And I'm, and he's coming to visit me. We had no bond. They no bonded us that day. We're sitting in a facility, 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 going to give us over paperwork that's going to fill, you know, all the grand jury stuff that's going to fill my room. He goes, I got to look into this. And so months went by and, you know, he's doing his due diligence on this. And, you know, come in and seeing me three hours down. the road and um so what's going on with all this and he said man they got all these people these

predicate acts like what's a predicate act and he goes all this stuff that you guys did wasn't for just the individual it was because the the organization is a corrupt enterprise right i go what about all this old stuff he goes let me tell you how rico works there's no statute of limitations when they start the riko investigation on you so what happened in 94 is just as good as it happened in in 2004. And 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 been bad guys for the last 10 years. Continual criminal enterprise. He goes, I, Mel, I don't think we can beat this in a trial. And I said, okay. I said, well, then what are you thinking?

And 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, they, he was talking to the U.S. attorney and Chris, my lawyer was, you know. And he goes, and they, they seem pretty cool, Mel. 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? Poh Duck, 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, you know, 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. We're getting to see the grand jury stuff. Who's going to take the stand against you? And that's what it was about in there. You know, I got to know Chris from sitting with him.

Seeing he was a good dude. He wasn't coming at me like. you know, 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, you know. And I said, okay, and it was 10 years. It was, 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 a 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 win. So, you know, 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 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. Not one person in that club had to spend a dime to call a lawyer for any, 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.

So, you know, so 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, and 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, you know. So Chris was always a gentleman to me, sitting in them proffers, you know, it was always cool. And it was all done and over with when I got sentenced and was heading up to prison, I thanked him in the U.S. attorney.

U.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 he was he was a good dude to me in there you know if they were in the room pointing everything at me and swearing him 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 myself but but chris and tate they were super great my lawyer liked them and we like 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 don't want nobody else to to suffer over me or hey you can get four more years off your sentence if you do you do you do you do this, I just 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. You know, I was already out of the club. When I got recode, I left because, you know, I, 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 beaten up an ex-girlfriend of mine, that I was very good. friends with her and her family still. And the only reason that I broke, 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 outlaw is 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.

And I said, choose your next dude wisely, please. You know, I love you, man. But we got apart 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. 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. Uh-uh. Just a street dude. They were a couple years younger than me. I believe Kendall's, I'm 57 now. She's probably like 53 for him too. And I got wind of it.

Her sister came and told me that this was happening. And I didn't believe it at first because I was like, there's no way that Kendall's going to 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 I said, there's no way that she would let that happen. Well, it was a truth. It was happening. So once we dug a little deeper into it and found out, you know, I wasn't too happy with that. So I get into a house where he was at and did a little work in that house is I like to, it's a very unique story. And me and him have a relationship these days. It's really bizarre, Sean, but it did the way it turned into. And so we got caught in the

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Go to armor.com slash SRS or enter SRS to get 30% off your first subscription order. That's A-R-M-R-A.com slash SRS. I'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 out. And there was some cops in the 7-Eleven. And the guy said, Mel Chancing, the Hells Angels got my friend kidnapped in the house. And we didn't know that the guy was gone like that. And I was getting busy with him in the house, why the fellows were packing up some of her stuff and getting some clothes together.

And, you know, 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, you know, get these guys out of here. and he came running back in and we looked out the police like we look 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 in stuff locked locked us all up you know brought us you know locked us up brought us to the local their local freezing and you know we all said I'm we'll get our lawyers and stuff so about one about

132 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 hell's 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 and I kind of wake up I'm freezing shum laying on this metal thing I got my of 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 it'll work out for you. They can't, you weren't at that house.

They can't charge you with this. Like we masterminded this through her, you know. So we went that morning time and got in front of a judge December 17th and hered all the charges, attempted murder, kidnapping, home invasion, the least one being an aggravated battery, right? And no bond, immediately, no bond. Same with Kendall. So we're all getting ready.

They were getting ready to take us, 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 our lawyer says, them guns were nothing to do with, you know, my clients. Them guns were in the house. They 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 what our,

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 there, 30 or 40K like that. So we all get out Christmas morning. This is Christmas Eve. Our treasurer comes. gives the money 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.

We 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 there was her 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 some pliers.

Pliers. Yeah. So that was my first time going to the penitentiary. And it was kind of funny because I used to always say that to the fellows, you know, like we're going to end up in two spots. the tombstone or the penitentiary. And as now as I'm walking through these penitentiaries, I was like, boy, this sucks. Lost my freedom, right? And it 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 the, 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. 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 given up one, I had an IROC Z-28 at the time, and I had given it to two FBI agents. They gave me two grand for the car.

I reported it stolen through all state, pocketed the money. If that's all that would have happened, I could have got them 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 from St. Louis. I didn't know him.

doing some research on them with some mobsters I knew from Chicago. And nobody knew him. But I didn't think that my guy was bad. I trusted my guy. And I said, well, you sell them the guns and the drugs. You've got the same shit. Go ahead. I don't need the money.

You do it, you know? So they really couldn't get me on anything. Well, they brought me to this warehouse. And they had this warehouse and they had boats and cars and bikes in there, Sean. You know, I go, what do you guys do with all this stuff? Oh, we 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 this IROG Z-28 you're trying to sell, right? And I go, yeah, I got about 10 grand of tunes in it. It's a pretty badass car. I go, but I don't know, nobody seems like they want to buy it, right? It's got a lot of stuff on it. And they said, well, we'll take it. So what do it?

They told me what they do it. 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 them 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 port, and they took me to my first federal prison in Peking, Illinois. I spent, I got 18 months on that, and 85. I did like 13 or 14 months, 12 months, 13 months, whatever that 85% was on that. So now I had a state conviction and a federal conviction. But 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.

And I got back my connection with the Lord. I was constantly in fellowship with them. I was running a prayer group, a prayer group in the state and the federal prisons, reading the Bible, just getting into the word, right? to everything that I wasn't doing before. Why did you get into it? You know, 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've seen little Melvin on TV. What's going on there? Like they were to, he's running the hell's angels? No, you know, my mom and dad would be like,

you know um and that's when i really i had that time away i got now i'm out of the the forest and i can see the trees and i'm like man how was i live in life here my daughter i'm not going to be around her i'm just did did back-to-back penitentiary stays how old was your daughter at the time um let's see 10 10 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'd 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 so all that was in my mind, Sean. It was all playing. It was like a movie I was watching. And that's when I got back centered and said, all right, Lord, here I am. But don't let me be a hypocrite. Don't let me listen to your word, hear your word. Don'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. And 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, 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 little different lifestyle, right? And I think I said this earlier, you know, I'm like, okay, Lord, I'm home. I'm not in the club no more. Not selling drugs, guns, shooting dudes off motorcycles and making all these, you know, violent calls here. I'm a pretty good guy right now. But the womenizing thing just, it has a...

it advanced itself as crazy it was as could say now because now i didn't have the club taken up my time when did you just spend what four years in prison with no yeah 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 scenes i was right back into the one after the another which was breaking my mother's heart because her and my dad were together since they've been kids. My two sisters were married when they were teenagers. And here I am, uh, 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 got to pass it around. She hated that shot. I said, I just got to share you. Oh, should 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, and that was, that's what really made me think about life and,

you know, spending time with my daughter and reconnecting with her and seeing my parents all the time now and, you know, not being in the club. I still had a motorcycle because I technically was still in the club. I didn't quit the club yet because I couldn't quit why 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 a 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 it, 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 were 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 fellow's asked me why. And I said, I can't give 100%. And 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, you know, 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 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 know the club no money, hand in all your stuff, see you down the road. You're good. You just, 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 know never wanted 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 mm-hmm 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 like i said said the guys used to go over to my mom and dad's house. When I was in the in the joints the first time, they knew I called up every night because every night I called the check on my mom and dad every night. So my mom said, you know, he's calling about seven o'clock and three, four of them show up and they'd pass the phone around. I go, what's going on? Now we're over by moms. I'm like, yeah, they're like eating pasta and meatballs. And you know, my mom was old Italian,

made all her food by hand, you know, rolled the, rolled the sausage out and everything like that. And I go, nice, nice, man. They always looked out. The fellows were looking out from my mom and dad and being over there and hanging out, you know. So pushback like that, that they didn't want me to leave, but no pushback like you ain't going nowhere else. That doesn't happen in that world, you know. Some guys from some other charters called me up and said, why don't you transfer here?

And I said, I'm not leaving because I don't like the fellow's hair. 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-assin-nothing, Sean. You know, I was down for the cause, whatever it took. You know, I meant that, the penitentiary, the tombstone. I was, you know, 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. I couldn't do that. I was the first one running in the doors. How horrible was that for you to leave? It was a little hard. I had a lot of good relationships with a lot of guys

around the country that, you know, that I had to call them up on the phone and say, hey, before you see it on the facts go out this week, you know, I left the club, I quit the club and they were like, what? A couple of guys like, what, 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 heart, my mom and dad, my daughter. It's time for me to focus on my life that I made here. I have to give my daughter my attention now, you 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, 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 over for you. So, 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? You know, after I left with that addiction.

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 said, please don't let me be that hypocrite. You know, even though I was running around the women, And 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 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 outlaws wanted me dead in the whole nine yards.

I didn't think I was not under stress, but I was. And when I got in themselves, I was like, man, kind of free for a minute here, you know? So 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 I got, we got indicted in I believe December. So I wasn't going to. gone long, but it was on the street now. Hey, Melk, what the hell's angels? He's no longer in the club. I didn't know what anybody else was going to think. I didn't

all of a sudden I knew the outlaws didn't love me now. He's a great guy, no, 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.

And one of the outlaws leaders called me up and said, hey, we can't deal with that dude that's the president now in Chicago. And I said, I can't help you out on that one. I don't have no if sands or butts 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, being in that lifestyle, there's always the next new hit that's coming. Somebody they're going to be aggravated with, you know, somebody's going to get your attention all the time in that life, right? New club, this, that. It's always, you're going to, they've got enough fights on their hand, right? Yeah. I was okay, you know. Yeah.

Damn. And then you went back? Then I went back. Then I went back. Then I went back. Yeah. Then the RICO came. How did that come in? How did that come about? So, you know, we knew that it was lurking in the backgrounds through them years, you know, and thinking about everything that we did and through that war, you know. I always heard about it, you know. And so now, It's the, you know, the months of 2004, the summer of 2004. And a couple 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 for a grand jury, something to do with a RICO case with you. And I said, okay. And I seen them. And I said, hey, bro. And I said, obviously, they know. that he painted this vehicle 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 know what's happening. I said, if you go and perjure yourself, you can end up getting yourself locked up. I put you in that position. I asked you to go do that for us. And I don't want to see you get locked up.

I can't afford a lawyer for you too 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 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 a, 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 go, okay, what's the date on it? And she told me the date on it. I said, okay. She said, I'll be out there to see you soon. I said, give me about a week later. I'm going to 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? So what's the date on it? She tells me the date on it.

I said, okay. I said, I'm going to beat a seat. you. She goes, I'm not telling them anything. I said, ah, I'm going to be down to talk to you. 30 minutes later, an hour later, whatever it might have been, get the phone call. It's one of my other girlfriends. And I go, hold on, let me guess. Did the feds just come and see you? She goes, how did you know? I said, seems to be going around today. I said, of grand jury and Peoria. 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 at the at 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 you know and laugh about it and I'm like man that was some dirty pool and he'll laugh and he'll tell you tomorrow like it's just he goes we were dying in there he goes the guy you've seen the guys walking by the room 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 pull 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 seeing all the girls. And I called my attorney up and my good, dear friend PJ, I was telling you about. And I said, listen, this is what they just did. And he goes, wow he goes that doesn't make any sense he goes what they must be at the bottom of the barrel if there's subpoena and 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 and 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 that are crimes that we're doing girls know nothing about me and he goes ah it's weird i go at the bottom of the barrel here this is their

go 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 the room to see if they were gonna 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 know being chris or laugh about it right and uh just crazy you know and i i talk 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 candles and stuff like that. But, you know, I was able to go back in and later in life and say, listen, I had apologized to him because it got heavy on my heart shun. Especially when I came home from the RICO and now I gave the Lord full surrender. You know, I say before

I went, gave them 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, 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 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 a towing company that I was doing some, like overseeing some, like a consultant worked for.

But that guy just paid me in the check. I cashed a 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. So I was talking to him.

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, you know, we either plead or go to trial. I go, I see this whole thing coming, and my Italian mother being a stern mother, and she said, you should have known that was coming. I mean, she didn't give me no sympathy like, oh, baby. Because 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 on tomorrow. But 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. I said, baby, your neighbor's 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, oh, and I said, hey, 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 Helsingdale days. This was when I was home from both prison sentence and now I'm out of the club. I just started dating her a couple months before that she ran a big hospital, big, you know, she had a business woman and stuff, and I'm at her house. So I said, oh my God, I said, give me something to wear. I 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.

You know, she's like a little tiny girl, you know, 105 pounds and she throws me a robe. I couldn't even get it on my forearm, right? I was 300 pounds. She throws me a robe. I 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 the hand, right? So I'm like, Kathy, open up the door. Hurry up, open up the door. I don'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 the 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, no. I'm not doing that. I 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, right? I said, I'm going to kneel at the top of the stairs. I note at the top of the stairs, kept my hands like this. And it felt like an eternity to where anybody came up and like threw the cuffs on me. It felt like an eternity. I'm thinking to myself, are these, 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? This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and I think a lot of people know they should probably talk to someone, but they just never actually take that step. Maybe it's finding the time. Maybe you worry about the cost. or maybe you just don't know where to start. What BetterHelp does is make that process straightforward. You fill out a short questionnaire.

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sessions are rated 4.9 out of 5 on average across over a million reviews. BetterHelp is in network with major health plans like UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, Etna, and more, with average co-pays around $23 for eligible members. Fill out the questionnaire and check your coverage today at betterhelp.com slash SRS. That's betterhelp.com slash SRS. I'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 muscles 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. You'll see my clothes on the floor. So he got me some clothes and let me put some. some, put some clothes on and stuff. And Kathy was outside. And they said, hey, you mind if we searched 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 it 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. She's, she's a businesswoman. 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. You know, 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 air, I said, go, 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 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 from my stuff. That was me. I was the individual.

Nobody held my, put a gun in my head to do all that stuff, right? I said, I'm not going back. Changing my life. I'm going to, we're going to 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, you know, they 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., Kathy goes to my mom's house, 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, you know.

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. I said, let 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 to have. Yeah, that hit the hardest with me. So, you know, now it's great because I got two grandgirls 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,

and I just have a great real, 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. That was the, that was me given that full surrender. I'm telling you, when, when, after we got that indictment and there was no bond, and now it's February of 2005, I'm sitting in this cold cell. you know and the marshals still are believing that you know i'm the hell's angel leader even though i'm out of the club

and they all they know is what they know right and uh just like when the when the swat team came in they came in you know 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 so 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 thought this was all behind me. I thought, you know, me and you were, 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. Christ wasn't going there with me, right? And 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 of 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. I was understanding what the word meant because now I was giving them my heart. I wasn't saying, get me out 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 cellies I had before I even pled. You know, this was 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. And the cell, he said to me, man, wow, that's some peace, huh? And 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. why 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 piece that was just deep, Sean, it was deep in me. I was peaceful. Not to say that I didn't have no days where, you know, I was, you know, looking at this. I mean, my lawyer went through some ups and downs with me. You know, there's a couple times he came to see me and I was like, F these guys, I'm tired of But 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, you know, they'd hate my lawyer.

You'd have to talk me off the ledge. Relax. You know, so I didn't just, you know, 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, you know, 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. I mean, 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, you know, when you're in a federal penitentiaries, there's guys from all over the United States in there, you know, all over. And, you know, some of them got there some old Mel stories, you know, some road stories. And they're like, wait a minute, this dude that's in here right now, that dude you're telling me about's in here running a bio study. Well, 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, 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 in 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, God, a snowbird's out here. This traffic sucks. And she's like, yeah, it beats sitting in an 8 by 10, right? And I'm like, it beats sitting in an 8 by 10. I keep my federal ID in one of my drawers in my kitchen.

Whenever 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, it was 49 months, you said. 49 months, yeah, yeah. So, 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 and 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. As 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 dapple 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 fellows would 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 that was my prayer. And I made it home and my dad passed eight months later. So 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 it. 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, you know. 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 moved Melissa from Florida to Chicago in 2009 I made her come up there because my dad passed and I was back living in the childhood home I had are you serious yes wow so my dad passed Sean and

my mom is 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'm, I got to go back and I'm going back in a moon room 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.

But I told my mom, I'm not going to let you stay alone in this house. You know, I'm going to 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, 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 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, you know, I was blessed to see. So my mom, of course, you know, got to meet Melissa in 2009.

And then my mom passed in 2019. They were best of friends, Melissa. We moved my mom to Florida in 2015. Yeah, she was her 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 babyed her home, I say, all the time, Sean, because she was such a believer, such a believer.

And love the Lord. So, you know, I was blessed that I got that time. Yeah, that was my prayer when I was away just to get home. So reconnected after I came home from the Rico. Now I had my dad, I had my mom, I had my daughter who was now older and my daughter had birth to my first grandbaby, Michaela, two or three months before I came home. And 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 from, you know, 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, or she goes, Jamie, I got to tell you something. She goes, I'm pregnant. And she goes, and 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? It's like, my dear friend. And 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. Oh, 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. So 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. I didn't 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 for it. And you were that age. By the time you were five, I was already gone doing all the 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 eyes. So, 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 the nightclubs and he said, Mel, you're 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. You 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 I was like, I'm done with this stuff, you know, and went to Florida. And then, you know, as you know, 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 2009. I knew of them, of course, right? I was bodybuilding fan flipping the magazines and Jim owning the Federation. And I always looked up to the guy, the Dorian Yates's and the Branch Warrens and the Lee Haney's and stuff like that, the Mr. Olympias.

And met a dear friend of mine now, Steve Weinberger, who owns Bev's Jim. He's one of our head judges for the federation and just got close to these guys, talking to these guys. And didn't want a job out of them, didn't want anything out of them. It was great to meet them when we just connected and stayed in touch with each other. Jim's in Pittsburgh, Steve's in Long Island. I was in Chicago. And that's how I got, I 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, Mel, we all, we love you, we get along with you, and we're all dear friends 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, 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 in in my first really legal legal uh career jobs as i say you know i always say it was i waited till i was 40 to get my first credit card and my first job that's wild wild huh i mean so what what is it uh when you say completely surrendered let Jesus take the wheel of me what does that mean glad you asked that because i you know me following you and um you know there's no coincidence and i'm here and we're going to talk about that you know and i you know the podcast uh you know you're the one that i said

i'd love to be on sean 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 um 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. I watch you ask these questions, you know. I see some podcast people and they, you know, you almost got a, it don't even seem like they're following them or the conversation, but you go, wow, wait a minute, tell me. And I'm watching that, you know, and I seen that. And that full surrender is, for me was not asking for things my way, not worrying

about what's happening tomorrow. Just know that I'm in the moment and you 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 a right fit for the show, I prayed on before I said yes to, to, to, with, with Dwayne doing the movie. Where does your, where do your answers come?

How do they come to you? On my heart. I don't give you an example. Talking about the movie thing. So I come home from prison. It's around 2010. I get a, a call from a book company, publishing company. Hey, Mel, we want to do a, 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 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 but she's like babe give him a phone call and tell them 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 asked, 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. 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. Okay, 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 floor. or 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. I wasn't interested in doing this anyway. Sorry, I wasted your trip in, but we're good. Oh, well, let's, no, no, no, no, we're good.

Too late now you got me not interested, right? So that is 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 he 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 want it really job at the time then either. You 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, 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 in a family, you know. So that's what I tell everybody.

I pray in everything. People 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 at it all sitting here right now, you know. You know, who this, my prayer is for this show that, 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. I 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 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. It would have been told already. And, you know, maybe somebody would have jumped on that book offer and that money,

you know, 100 grand to a guy like me is a lot of money. But I just, it wasn't on my. my heart and I don't do anything that I don't feel as far as that I pray on, you know. Prayed on my marriage, you know, is this the right girl for me? And boy, 16 years later, I, you know, 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, my bodybuilding stuff. show up and do what I do. She runs everything from, you know, setting up the, to the convention centers to the, to the athletes check-ins, to the medals, to all that, the stages and everything. Little Mel does all that. 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 that made by tens, you know. You know, it's interesting out there you said how many former, maybe you didn't say former, people in the biker community, biker gang, 1% 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 Berndtel 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 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, there's 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.

And 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. It's like my brother these days. His name is Tony. And 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 Henschman 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. Yeah, it wasn't, or the Hells Angels and the Pagans.

Doesn't watch it. Says a couple days later, pops up in his feet 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. When night he said he woke up, two, three o'clock in the morning, popped up on his feet.

So let me see what this bozo was 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 terror. This dude didn't cry. He goes, and I'm like, listening to you talk about the Lord. And he goes, and I had this, it 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 fellowshiping with each other. And he gave his life to Christ. And he's an amazing member of the John 316 devotional team.

And I'm being 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. He'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? Baby, 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. It'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. And when 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 on the, you know,

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 to my faith, and I'm never going to hide it, no matter where I'm at, you know, and then people are like, man, we want to know that. We want to become a strong believer. I'll go back to Terry Belay, Hulk Hogan. The 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 Rowgan. 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, ah, I don't know. 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. but through them years of me and him being tight and fellowshiping 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 know in you 30-something years i know when you when you at the worst of the worst used to come in them come and see us in the wrestling matches and what your vest on in 300 pounds

and them dude used to be like damn terry that guy's the real deal huh and terry 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. But 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, do 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 wrote around the ring with the Hells Angels when we came riding around the ring and stuff like that with him and stuff.

And 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? You know, and watching him talk to Terry about their beliefs. and I'm watching Terry put it out there. Didn't 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 Elsup who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago is putting these people in my life to do what's going on in my life. Yeah. 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 banked by offering the most rewarding fee-free

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calling this month. Do you still read it? Every morning and night because I got the morning and nighttime. So I do it Monday through Friday for the team. I read it in the morning time. This morning I did it from the hotel and I read it, you know, then read the passages out of the Bible. We 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. I 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 them breaks that down that story down i've heard the same comments i don't give a shit right right bro me does good for me all half the time i read it i think it's talking about me amen 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 and i'm like that was my fucking

That was it, right? 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. I put it down for a month or two and then pick it up. This year I've only missed a couple of days. But what I'm noticing is 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. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It definitely speaks to you. And she took it, you know, right out of the Bible, the passages that they're at the bottom.

What is today? The 14th? It is 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.

Keep 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 what are the passages underneath there i know they're written that says uh corinthians 15 20 through 23 hebrew 6 9 yes so then passages back up what sarah wrote in that the story right and uh not a moment too soon and not a moment too late you know is this one about surrendering that It's more about living in the moment. Yeah, and trust in the Lord, yeah. But anyway, 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? What are we, you know, how am I going to?

just all the shit in life, all the responsibilities, all the expectations that you need to live up to, all the fears, 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? 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. I don't know. Yeah. I live in an ambitious life. I have a lot of goals. I have a lot of business goals, family goals, financial goals. I have a lot of goals. I just am a very goal-orientated person.

Sure. 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 worrying about tomorrow, you can't change a single hair on your head, right? Stay in the moment, staying today, what is it doing?

You good worrying about tomorrow. 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. 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. The 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 any. I'm not saying that means going to be lazy. 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. I don't even know what I don't have any hobbies. Yeah. I have no hobbies.

Work and I spend time with my kids and my wife. And that's about it. Yeah. And I mean, you're successful. But your relationship with the Lord, and 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 Internet's telling me about

or nothing like that, your will. If this movie goes, it's your will. If I'm meant to be on Sean Ryan, 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 long before we came up, you know, and picked you, right?

So 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 wants you to be able to take care of them, right? I don't think you'd be sitting here doing that. 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 he's going to move you around for that season. I never thought I would leave the club. I was the poster child, right? But for a season, he brought me and brought me in different places, you know, and I see what he's using me for now. I'm being a vessel for him now to reach some of the hardest of hards, right? Some of the guys that, um, I love Tim Tebow. I 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 a, 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 your friend will tell me, Pastor Steve will say, Tim Tebow's not reaching the dudes that you're reaching and vice versa. We all have a part that we are doing for the kingdom, right? And so I had to get used to that, like, 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 I'm, you know, the Sidney's 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 I just 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, rifts over our head families, you know, the blessings of that. I 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 he's going to do something with 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. What 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 you know, I can tell somebody, hey, come pick me up. I'm at the Dow House 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. 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. Not if you go take this 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 62,000-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 it's, 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. ever 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 tomorrow's.

We can't change tomorrow, you know, but we know who does. Who's on the throne and who's holding it? And it brings us back to the word, your will be done. Give us to stay our daily bread, our daily bread on eating food. He provides our provisions. We have a home over our heads and everything. He gives us what we need. What if Mel Chancy 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, there's a, I do see that a lot. But through this show, I am affiliated with some insane wealth. It's crazy. People with some insane wealth. And they're not.

It's weird, you know? I think it's like if people hit a certain whatever it is in their head, certain amount of wealth they, I swear, I think they become their own God. They think they become their own God or they, 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.

Don'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. Corps Medical, my body villain 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 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 8 by 10 for a long time. The 2,000 square foot home I have in Florida with the Lani and the pools like Taj Mahm, hall to me. And I thank him for that every day. I say, thank you for, wow, I'd 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 is if we're praying together. I'm praying out loud for somebody. I'm walking with them and fellowshiping with them all the time. I'm in meetings on the phones and not everybody got the memo. Not everybody's a believer. I call it, believe in getting the memo. I'm on the phone dealing with different chairman from around the country for the bodybuilding industry, dealing me and Sydney 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 peen hammer, you know. And I have to center myself. I'm 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. You handle this for me, Lord. You, you know, I have a lot of times. I was sitting in this meeting one time, Sean, and there 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 got to be honest. What am?

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. And 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. 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, you know, I always just say, Sean, 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 me, Pastor Steve, Chris, so many people that I see that that happens in life. And I say, there's no coincidence.

No coincidence that I'm sitting here. You know, there's no coincidence that Joe Rogan, who was a straight up non-believer back in the day, has had some amazing people on his show to fellowship with him. And now you see Joe is, you know, 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 which your boy he gave him to you you know your wife and you spend the time with him and everybody that knows you and 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 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 it, right, bro? You know, we're all play a part in the kingdom for sure. What do you think, Sean? 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.

you feeling better informed than you were before you hit play. Terrace, 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. All 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 that? Core medical, a hormone replacement company, obviously for men and women.

And we've been blessed, Sean. Corps Medical has been in business for 16 years, I believe, plus years. But the last eight and a half years, we've been really had the blessing of working with our veterans. As you know, 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 we had the blessing of working with them. And so we have something that's called our core medical foundation. Every year we have our core medical appreciation weekend and military appreciation weekend. That's usually the last weekend in February. We're this past year we just raised, I think, $160 or $80,000, $180,000 for 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 VA for veterans and ducks could be a little taskful at sometimes, right? a little hard at sometimes, right? The VA? The 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 Corps Medical. for completely free that the VA will 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 and if they do they're doing it the completely wrong way they'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 Sydney'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 that you guys were talking about earlier. And to get this done for our veterans that would be so amazing that they would get this hormone replacement, the testosterone replacement, and getting it paid for from the VA who you know it's uh it's it's been and that would be how cool 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 and guys you know um rascal believe the VA isn't paying for that stuff yet it's they they don't even um this is hearsay i don't go to the VA I haven't gone to the VA I haven't gone to the VA over 10 years. Yeah. I'd rather just take care of my medical shit by myself and not have the VA involved. But I heard there have been a lot of improvements of the VA.

But, man, everybody I know that I served with is on hormone replacement therapy. And every doctor that I bring in here says, Pretty much, we should all be on formal replacement therapy. For sure. Except the VA doctors. Except the VA. They don't think that. Because they're like, you know, you go in the VA in the range for a man today is

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 in L.A.? They'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 and ourselves. And so many people that you know that are part of our core medical team, there are strategic partners from two lamb to Vincent Rocco Vargas to Cody Alfred to Nick Cumulatus. 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 percosa, take this. you know, and they weren't doing that.

And we brought these men on and watched the change. And with our outreach program, with our, you know, our core medical foundation, we've seen the brothers that we have taken and gotten their hormones clicking on all cylinders, as I like to say, changed their life around. And I see some guys that were like, we were taking all the medication that the VA was given 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, Nick Kay 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 Sydney and myself, that was our dream, you know, eight and half years ago

when we started working with veterans in the first. responders that we could get something done for them. And you know, it's just we have to jump through hoops, right? Every time we think we, we got to the top of the ladder, they put another step up for us. But, you know, Sydney 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 Kay, we got you. You know, we're going to do this for you guys and get your hormone replace. 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. And we have to prove, in fact, through our doctors, through the real-life studies, that, you know, the suicide rate has dropped when these veterans are, their hormones are running on all cylinders, right? There's a reason we have testosterone. We have estrogen. We have F-S-H-N-L-H 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 substance. some guy to be saying, you're good. Take a value. You're good. And, you know, they're not addressing it. Then 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, 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 so close to that. It's such a blessing for us. 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 us, if you're a veteran, DM me. We 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 and 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. Let's work on the honor program. If you are laid off or you were 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. We'll keep you going and 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 we trust our patients and we know that we're good with them and they're good with us. So we're very excited for that. And 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 gonna be a game changer. Right on.

Because, you know, as some veterans are, you know, 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, right? You know, I wouldn't keep my, you know, at 57, I wouldn't keep my testosterone levels at the top

at a range at 1,000. I don't need that no more. Me. 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, you know, 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. I hope 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 help so many people out and change so many lives, right? I'm a believer coming from the

family I came from and the veteran family I came from and stuff, you know, 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, you know, might not be from this country or didn't do anything for us. It seems to me like it's upside down, right? I mean, without getting into a whole other four hours of topic, right?

But, you know, so that's what we've been working so strongly on that. And we're so pleased that and where we're at and excited to be able to make that announcement. We're so close. And if we can get this done, it'll be a game changer for our veterans to come in and being taken care of and appreciated. 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, this one family that got one of the houses and just watching them tear up there. It just, man, it tears me up, but it just makes me smile inside, like that we're making

a difference and we're helping our brothers and sisters out that looked out for us, right? And, you know, I didn't see everybody, you know, I didn't join the military. Look what I went and did, right? I wasn't the first one standing up saying I want to go serve my country. So the people that were means a lot to me. You know, coming from the family, like I said, I did, and seeing them with 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'd be the first one to come on

here and say, man, he's, he was in some dark places, you know, 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, we just 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 and a half years ago if we could have got into the VA and turned them around and got them on the team with this. But he just didn't want to hear all that, you know.

Yeah. So that's cool that we're, I'm very excited for the future of that, you know. How about this movie? Wow. What's that happening? So, um, we are in the stage right now where there, are talking to some writers, right? You know, of course, Duane'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 remember Duane 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. And he sure did, you know. 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 didn't chase this. He goes, I did, meaning 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. And when he said that, you know, how much of this old story can you tell because 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 trust it in me. And he goes, and here we are today. And he goes, you know, that says a lot. He said, Mel, for you. He goes, because 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 story is 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 going to have to go to work, Mel. And I'm like, I got you, DJ. I got you. So we laugh and joke about all that and 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. about it at another time and and there will they will be making the movie for us and 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 we could be in the filming process filming the movie bad which should be good

that's exciting yeah it's exciting because you know I'm obviously a consultant on the movie and we'll be on the sets with everybody, you know, and, you know, going over the parts and everything like that. So I'm definitely looking forward to that. And, of course, you know, getting that time with Wayne and with John and stuff and 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 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 and uh and when he picked john and we were talking about i laughed and he goes what are laughing about it he goes oh you know everybody mel you know him and i said i know him you know him you know him

and i said i'm going to tell you how i know him it's sidney's brother-in-law and uh he was just shaking his head and uh so we were like we're not going to get an a list actor that's going to be two hundred ninety pounds right we always said that from the beginning of this story and in and doing Wayne'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. And I've already known him now through Sydney and the family. And we'll 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 flame here, right? We can't kill you, you know? I said, it's going to be hard to get that kind of muscle, you know. You're not a young kid anymore. But we'll definitely, with me training him and him eat and the way he needs to eat. And John is so focused on whatever he does. Whatever part he is playing, he is focused.

He's that method actor. He is focused on it. You know, DJ Duane 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 it's, and I just love the journey to where we're at, right? I mean, you know, we know it's, 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 then I gained a dear friend out of it. one of the guys at Seven Buck Production by the name of Frankie, 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. He's like a little brother to me, you know, just had his first baby, him and his wife, not too long ago. And I got to see that and be a part of that. And, you know, through this journey, I've got so close with these guys and just gained, I say, family out of it. So it's pretty cool to be where we're at now.

I'm excited for that. You had 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 strike, the actor strike. We went through all that. That slowed things down, you know, but, you know, we were okay. I remember, I remember Dwayne telling me, Mel, you know, thank you for being this patient.

I said, brother, it's good. It's in his timing. And things are going to put out when he wants it to and reach the people he wants it to, I'm good. I'm going to do what you tell them and continue to relax and tan in the yard and hang in the pool and can tend to my other businesses. And I'm not pushing nothing along, right? I'm not grabbing the wheel, as I always say, right?

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, what's this going to happen?

When's this going to happen? He 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 very cool stuff coming up. And I'm excited for it. And, you know, my prayer is the law. I tell the Lord, just keep me healthy.

And 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 and until, you know, 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. Well, Mel, we're wrapping up the interview here. Yeah. Well, we have this new thing that we do. It's called The Hot Question. Oh. 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 scraped 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. Oh, 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. During this war, Outlaws' Boxer.

Kevin Spike O'Neill 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 Hells Angels? So I know Spike. I know Kevin O'Neill. You know, he's currently, you know, he got a life. sentence. I think the most dangerous times I would have to say was, you know, with all them bombings

that were going on, you know, now it wasn't face to face. You know, 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, you know? I mean, if people were on the streets just kind of watching Melchancey 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. They probably thought I was a lunatic, right? Like, what is this guy doing? Imagine grocery shopping, waiting for your wife and I come out and do all that? You're like, what is this knucklehead doing it, right? 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 tried. train for two hours. I come out and that gym parking lot's wide open. Like, you know, big, the gym was in big, uh, parking lot. Big, uh, uh, had also stores around it. If they went on, on it, went on there and did that, you know, or when we weren't at the clubhouse, wired something and explosive to the door.

Did you ever find anything? Every 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, Chris, 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 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 de-attach it. they hit it with a water cannon to blow it up. No shit. They had to explode the bomb with a water cannon, but they built a perimeter around it,

and they couldn't deactivate it, and they hit it like that. So, yeah, he found that under his truck. I never found nothing under mine, you know, or 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. It wasn't ready for me to pull out. It was in my hand with one in the...

chamber and the hammerback 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, when, while then bombing started because now it could have came from anywhere, you know, if we ran into each other where we were face to face, then it was on face to face and whatever happened, happened, you know, but them bombings was definitely a time that we all had 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? We 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 it.

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 Sunny 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, they make, you put an out date on your tattoo. So when you have a tattoo on you, wherever you have the Hell's Angel tattoo, if you leave, it'll say out 10, you know, or April, 411, 2004, you know, my out date was under here. I 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 Hells Angel, right?

So 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 Hells Angel. He was from Oakland. He got the tattoo. So when we got a whole Oakland 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, obviously not on his own will, and put him in a van and put some irons on it. Took the tattoo off. but you know I don't you know I didn't know the guy I 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 I 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 replica the patches from China you can go get 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, where there was a Mongol taking a Hell's Angel patch off a guy in 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. 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 know, I believe it was both stage.

They both were fake, right? So, but as crazy as that sounds, I mean, there was people going and doing that, you know. I mean, no tattoo artist that was in our neighborhoods would go put the Hell's Angel tattoo at deathhead on somebody unless they heard it from us. We worked with a few tattoo guys. So when a member got in the club, you know, we, 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, you know, after you're

party and for the next day you're going to the tattoo shop and you're putting your, you're, you know, my first Hell's Angel tattoo is 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 and 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, that you don't put that on nobody unless it's coming from us.

We don't even know you. Why would you do that? So, you know, it's as crazy as it sounds, Sean, people are, uh. 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, what we felt was, you know, what we believed in. 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. Heavenly Father, Father, we thank you. We thank you for this fellowship kind of with me. 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 upon our hearts full surrender that we may know your word and 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 does build some of the best

relationships with you, Lord. From prisons to hardships, let them feel your presence. Meet them, Father, right where they are. They may know and feel your love of each and every one of us. Because you, Father, loved us so much that you gave us your one and only son. 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. Amen. Beautiful. Thank you, bro. Thank you. Man, so cool. Bell, God bless, brother. You too, brother. God bless you.

Super happy with me. It's had an amazing day. Me too. I've been looking forward to this since we set this up four, five, six weeks ago. I've been looking forward to it and praying on it. And my expectations were met, Sean. I 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 touched every, checked every mark off of being knuckleheads. And here we are. Right back at you. I love you, bro. Thank you. No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this at all,

anything. Please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.