Background and career
Ralph Hubert "Sonny" Barger Jr. (October 8, 1938 – June 29, 2022) was an American outlaw biker who was a founding member of the Oakland, California, charter of the Hells Angels in 1957. After forming the Oakland charter, Barger was instrumental in unifying various disparate Hells Angels charters and had the club incorporated in 1966. He emerged as the Hells Angels' most prominent member during the counterculture era and was reputed by law enforcement and media to be the club's international president, an allegation he repeatedly denied. The author Hunter S. Thompson called Barger "the Maximum Leader" of the Hells Angels, and Philip Martin of the Phoenix New Times described him as "the archetypical Hells Angel", saying he "didn't found the motorcycle club ... but he constructed the myth". Barger authored five books, and appeared on television and in film. Barger served a total of 13 years in prison, following a conviction for heroin trafficking in 1974, and a 1988 conviction for conspiracy to bomb the clubhouse of a rival motorcycle club, the Outlaws. He was also acquitted of murder in 1972, and of racketeering in 1980. Barger rejected accusations from law enforcement characterizing the Hells Angels as an organized crime syndicate, and maintained that the club should not be held accountable for crimes committed by individual members.
Ralph Hubert Barger Jr. was born in Modesto, California, on October 8, 1938, the son of Kathryn Carmella (née Ritch) and Ralph Hubert Barger. His father had German and Dutch ancestry, and his mother was of Italian descent. His mother left the family when Barger was four months old, leaving him and his older sister Shirley to be raised by their Pentecostal grandmother and alcoholic father, a day laborer on the Oakland docks. Barger grew up in Oakland in the post-war era, during which time the city's shipbuilding and automobile industries went into decline, leading to a significant rise in unemployment. Growing up, Barger was suspended from school several times for assaulting teachers, and he often fought with other boys. He dropped out of school in the tenth grade. Although many of his school friends became drug addicts, Barger worked at a grocery store and enlisted in the U.S. Army, aged sixteen in 1955. He was given an honorable discharge fourteen months later when it was discovered that he had forged his birth certificate in order to be able to join. Barger had liked the discipline, masculine camaraderie, and learning how to disassemble weapons. After his return from the Army, Barger drifted between menial jobs and lived with his father in a single residence at a hotel, later moving in with his sister and her children.
In 1956, Barger joined his first motorcycle club, the Oakland Panthers, which he founded with a group of fellow military veterans. After that club disbanded, he started riding with another group of bikers, one of whom, Don "Boots" Reeves, wore a patch that belonged to a defunct Nomads chapter of the Hells Angels in North Sacramento. Founding their own Hells Angels club on April 1, 1957, each member wore the patch – a small skull wearing an aviator cap set within a set of wings, later copyrighted as the Hells Angels' "Death's Head" logo – after having replicas made at a trophy store in Hayward. Barger was not the founder of the Hells Angels as is often claimed – the group was founded in 1948 – but he became its best known member to such an extent that he is often misidentified as the club's founder. He and the Oakland Hells Angels were initially unaware that there were several other, loosely affiliated clubs using the same name throughout California. The founding members of the Oakland Hells Angels were "basically honest blue-collar or unskilled workers looking for excitement", according to George "Baby Huey" Wethern, who became the chapter vice president in 1960. Unlike the World War II veterans who formed the early Hells Angels chapters, many of the founding members of the Oakland chapter were former servicemen with disreputable military records. Barger described his chapter as a "wild bunch". After a chance encounter with a member of a pre-existing Hells Angels chapter, Barger learned of the club's history, rules, regulations and procedures. He was appointed president of the Oakland chapter in 1958 following a series of meetings with Hells Angels from Southern California. With Barger as president, the Oakland Hells Angels traveled around California and amalgamated with the other Hells Angels chapters, dividing territory and forming club bylaws. While infighting did occur between the chapters, conflicts predominantly arose with other clubs such as the Gypsy Jokers. When Otto Friedli, the founder of the original San Bernardino Hells Angels chapter, was imprisoned in 1958, Barger was proclaimed de facto national president. One of his first actions was to relocate the club's "mother chapter" – the national headquarters – from San Bernardino to Oakland. Later that year, Barger suffered a fractured skull during a fight with Oakland police. Although the basic organization was in place when Barger assumed leadership of the club, he introduced additional rules pertaining to new members, club officers, and the establishment of new chapters. Under Barger's leadership, the club's membership began to increase. By 1960, the Oakland Hells Angels had established an extensive narcotics network within the club. Some of Barger's rules included "no using dope during a meeting" and "no drug burns" (rip-offs). The Hells Angels worked as "part-time distributors" of drugs in the 1950s and early 1960s. According to George Wethern – who left the Hells Angels in 1972 and went on to testify against the club before entering the Federal Witness Protection Program – in his 1978 book A Wayward Angel, Barger convened a meeting of the leaders of the Hells Angels and other California motorcycle clubs in 1960 in which the various clubs parleyed over the mutual problem of police harassment. The clubs voted to ally under a "1%" patch to be worn on their respective "colors". The term refers to a comment allegedly made by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) that 99% of motorcyclists were law-abiding citizens, implying the last one percent were outlaws. In 1961, Barger opened the first Hells Angels chapter abroad in New Zealand. The Oakland chapter, with Barger serving as its president, assumed an informal position of authority within the Hells Angels that began following a confrontation with local police and the California Highway Patrol in the aftermath of an outlaw motorcycle meeting in Porterville in September 1963. Although always a predominantly male organization, the Hells Angels had female members until 1964 when Barger imposed a rule making the club male only. He justified the male-only rule on the grounds that female Hells Angels were less able to defend themselves against rival bikers seeking to steal their patches. Barger was employed as a machine operator from 1960 to 1965, when he was dismissed due to extended absences. His criminal record began in 1963 after he was arrested for possession of marijuana. He was arrested again on the same charge the following year, and for assault with a deadly weapon in 1965 and 1966. In the 1965 incident, he forced his pistol into a bar patron's mouth after the man had made disparaging remarks about the Hells Angels. Barger claims the gun fired by accident, but wrote in his 2000 autobiography Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club: "since the motherfucker was already shot in the head, I bent him over the pool table and shot him again". Barger was convicted of assault with the intent to murder. When a rival club of bikers stole Barger's motorcycle, he and his members assaulted them with spiked dog collars, whipped them with bullwhips, and then used ballpeen hammers to break their fingers. The Oakland Hells Angels maintained a prominent position as "first among equals" by having the largest membership of any U.S. chapter and because of Barger's esteem among club members internationally. The author and journalist Hunter S. Thompson wrote in his 1967 book Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs that "in any gathering of Hell's Angels, there is no doubt who is running the show", describing Barger as "a 6-foot, 170-pound warehouseman from East Oakland, the coolest head in the lot, and a tough, quick-thinking dealer when any action starts", and saying of him: "By turns he is a fanatic, a philosopher, a brawler, a shrewd compromiser and a final arbitrator." Barger continually denied that he was the Hells Angels' leader or that Oakland was the club's headquarters, however, saying: "There’s no charter that's the boss. That's all cops and newspapers."
Barger and the Hells Angels, many of whom were military veterans, considered themselves anti-communist and anti-subversive patriots. In 1964, Barger and another Hells Angel, Michael "Tiny" Walters, told an Oakland Tribune columnist: "Our oath is allegiance to the United States of America. If there should be trouble we would jump to enlist and fight. More than 90 per cent of our members are veterans. We don't want no slackers." When students at the University of California, Berkeley announced an anti-Vietnam War rally, the Oakland Hells Angels denounced the rally as "a despicable un-American activity". On October 16, 1965, Barger led a group of Hells Angels in an attack on anti-war demonstrators marching from Berkeley to the Army Terminal in Oakland to protest against munitions shipments. The Oakland police reportedly stood aside and let the attack commence, whereas the Berkeley police intervened to stop the bikers from assaulting the protesters. Six Hells Angels members were arrested and a Berkeley police sergeant suffered a broken leg in the brawl. The Angels maintained that the attack was done "in the interest of public safety and the protection of the good name of Oakland, California." The incident led to a collection of students, left-wing political organizations, and labor unions led by Allen Ginsberg and Jerry Rubin meeting with motorcycle club representatives, headed by the president of the Sacramento Hells Angels chapter, in a cafeteria at San Jose State University. Ginsberg and Rubin sought assurance that a planned Vietnam Day Committee protest march in Oakland on November 20, 1965, would not be disturbed. Ginsberg invited Barger and the Oakland Hells Angels to a party where he provided the bikers with free alcohol, drugs, and sex in exchange for their guarantee that the rally would not be attacked. On November 19, 1965, five Hells Angels led by Barger held a press conference at their bail bondsman's office, announcing that the club would not attend the protest the following day as "Any physical encounter would only produce sympathy for this mob of traitors", according to Barger. He went on to read aloud a telegram sent to President Lyndon B. Johnson, stating: "I volunteer a group of loyal Americans for duty behind the line in Vietnam. We feel that a crack group of trained guerillas could demoralize the Viet Cong and advance the cause of freedom." President Johnson did not reply to the letter. After the spate of publicity the Hells Angels received in 1965, Barger had the club's name copyrighted. The Hells Angels were incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 1966. Barger and the Hells Angels became associated with the counterculture phenomenon of the 1960s. Between 1966 and 1973, the majority of his legitimate personal income was derived from consulting various film projects. He acted as a technical advisor on a series of outlaw biker films beginning with Roger Corman's The Wild Angels (1966). Onscreen, Barger was identified but did not speak in Hells Angels on Wheels (1967) and was one of several members of the Angels who had speaking parts playing themselves in Hell's Angels '69 (1969); he appeared in several additional films. Barger features prominently in Hunter S. Thompson's book, Hell's Angels. He was unimpressed with Thompson, and said of the writer: "When he tried to act tough with us, no matter what happened, Hunter Thompson got scared. I ended up not liking him at all, a tall skinny, typical hillbilly from Kentucky. He was a total fake." Barger and the Hells Angels are also depicted in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), during Ken Kesey's La Honda encampment. Using his fame, Barger opened a chapter in Omaha, Nebraska in 1966, which, besides the chapter in New Zealand, was the first Hells Angel chapter outside of California. In 1967, Barger opened a Hells Angel chapter in Lowell, Massachusetts, which was the first Hells Angel chapter on the East Coast. During the "Summer of Love" in San Francisco in 1967, the Hells Angels began to sell PCP, which came to be known as "Dust of the Angels" or DOA for short. PCP came to be popular with the hippies during the "Summer of Love," owing to its ability to cause hallucinations, and the Angels came to dominate the market for PCP in the Bay Area. Barger later admitted that besides selling PCP, his chapter "used to move most of the LSD" in the San Francisco area. Selling PCP made the Hells Angels wealthy for the first time, and according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Tim McKinley, who often investigated Hells Angels-related cases, it was in 1967 that the Hells Angels become a major criminal organization in their own right. Prior to 1967, the Angels had been used as subcontractors for other criminal organizations who used them to distribute cocaine and marijuana. With PCP, the Angels created a vertical monopoly. As PCP lost popularity, the Hells Angels switched to selling methamphetamine, a market that they have dominated ever since. Barger recruited Kenny Maxwell, a former chemist for the Royal Dutch Shell oil company, who taught the Hells Angels how to make methamphetamine. In 1967, Barger enlisted Clarence "Butch" Crouch, a biker from Shreveport, Louisiana, and utilized him to form a Hells Angels chapter in Cleveland. In December 1967, Barger visited Ohio to oversee the merger of two Cleveland motorcycle gangs to form a local Hells Angels chapter. Barger ordered Crouch to eliminate the city's remaining biker gangs in order to conquer the methamphetamine market in the Cleveland area. For at least five years beginning in 1967, Barger and the Hells Angels surrendered hundreds of guns and hundreds of pounds of explosives, as well as the locations of caches of weapons and narcotics, to the Oakland Police Department in exchange for the release of jailed Hells Angels members and other considerations from authorities. Oakland and Berkeley suffered a spate of approximately 80 bombings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and police made the arrangement with the Hells Angels in order to acquire black market weapons which could otherwise be used by "subversives" such as Black Panther Party and Weather Underground radicals. The Angels were dealing in weapons which were stolen from armories and gun stores, or smuggled from abroad. Oakland police sergeant Edward "Ted" Hilliard testified in 1972 that he accepted guns, dynamite, and grenades from Barger personally in return for deals on arrests during at least fifteen separate meetings, the most recent of which occurred in the spring of 1971. Hilliard also testified that Barger had offered "to deliver the bagged body of a leftist for every Angel released from jail", an offer Hilliard refused as it "was absolutely out of the question". Barger denied ever making such an offer. Hilliard insisted, however, that authorities had not permitted crimes committed by the Hells Angels. The first internal murder of a Hells Angels member sanctioned by the club was allegedly carried out when Paul "German" Ingalls, a member of the Oakland chapter who had previously transferred from the Omaha charter, was found guilty of burglarizing Barger's valuable coin collection by a six-man kangaroo court at the home of a Hells Angel on February 1, 1968. Ingalls was forced to ingest a large quantity of barbiturates until he suffered a fatal overdose. In the late 1960s, Barger began selling heroin and also developed an addiction to cocaine. He was described as being "totally crazed on cocaine" for a time. Barger was allegedly the main distributor of cocaine and heroin in the East Bay area. He was among 33 members of the Oakland chapter arrested on drug charges after police raided a bar and a duplex apartment in the city on August 30, 1968. $7,000 worth of heroin and $2,500 worth of other narcotics were confiscated, as were firearms — including an M16 rifle, two shotguns, and an M1 carbine – and a large cache of ammunition, knives, chains, and suspected stolen merchandise. On July 30, 1969, Barger opened up the first Hells Angel chapter in Europe with a chapter being founded in London, followed by another in Zürich in 1970. In 1969, he opened up Hells Angels chapters in New York, Salem and Rochester, giving the Angels a strong presence in the Northeast.
Barger was one of the Hells Angels present at the Rolling Stones' Altamont Free Concert on December 6, 1969, at which the bikers were reportedly given $500 of beer to provide security. Concert goers and musicians alike were subjected to violence from the Hells Angels, including Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane, who was knocked unconscious, and audience member Meredith "Murdock" Hunter, who was stabbed to death. Barger admitted in his autobiography that the Hells Angels had "beat the fuck out of them" (the people attending the concert). One of the Hells Angels pointed a gun at Keith Richards when he wanted to leave the stage owing to the violence in front of him. Barger claimed to have been sitting on stage drinking beer when the violence was taking place. As a result of critical media attention given to the Hells Angels after the concert, Barger went on KSAN, a local Bay Area radio station, to justify the actions of the Hells Angels and to present their side of the story. He asserted that violence only started once the crowd began vandalizing the Angels' motorcycles. Barger would later state that Hunter fired a shot that struck a Hells Angels member with what he described as "just a flesh wound." Barger maintained that the Rolling Stones were ultimately responsible for the violent events that took place at the concert, saying: "They agitated the crowd, had the stage built too low, and then used us to keep the whole thing boiling. They got exactly what they wanted – a dark scary atmosphere to play 'Sympathy for the Devil' ... Just because you sing well doesn't mean you can act like a bunch of assholes to your fans – and that's what they did that night at Altamont". He blamed the Rolling Stones' extended delay before making an onstage appearance for worsening the hostility of the crowd, and said the Hells Angels refused to act as bodyguards for "a bunch of sissy, marble-mouthed prima donnas" when the band asked the bikers to escort them to the stage. He also claimed that he stuck a gun into Keith Richards' side, to force the Rolling Stones to keep on playing through the riot despite the band's misgivings. Barger took umbrage with what he felt was the Stones' refusal to take responsibility for the catastrophe and he said in the days after the concert: "... Mick Jagger, like, put it all on us. He used us for dupes". Barger appears in the documentary film about the Altamont Free Concert, Gimme Shelter (1970). Reflecting on the Altamont concert, which has been referred to variously as "the end of the hippie dream" and "the day the Sixties died", Barger wrote in his autobiography: "All that shit about Altamont being the end of an era was a bunch of intellectual crap. The death of Aquarius. Bullshit, it was the end of nothing ... Altamont may have been some big catastrophe to the hippies, but it was just another Hells Angels event to me". After Altamont, Barger sought to expand the Hells Angels and improve the club's image. Members who were of little value to the Hells Angels were drummed out, and intravenous drug use was banned by the club. Barger also stripped the Hells Angels' "colors" of offensive patches, such as Nazi regalia and various colored wings awarded to members as a reward for sexual adventures performed in the presence of other members. The club also hired public relations specialists and began participating in charity fund drives. The dispute between the Hells Angels and the Rolling Stones was compounded when the band refused to compensate the Angels for $50,000 in legal fees accrued by the club in the trial of Alan Passaro, who was acquitted of Meredith Hunter's murder on the grounds of self-defense. In March 1983, Clarence Crouch, a founding member of the Hells Angels' Cleveland chapter, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the club had an "open contract" on members of the Rolling Stones and had made two failed attempts on the life of Mick Jagger. Barger subsequently called a press conference to deny Crouch's testimony. He again refuted the claims of a murder contract on Jagger in an interview with the Phoenix New Times in 1992, saying: "I personally don't like the guy, but that doesn't mean I want him dead. There are seven [Hells Angels] chapters in England and he comes over here a lot. If there was a contract out on him, then he'd be dead. It's that simple, he wouldn't still be singing."
Barger referred to the 1970s as "a gangster era for" the Hells Angels, writing in his autobiography: "The other clubs tried to take our [reputation] from us. The Blacks and Latinos didn't like us. White people were scared of us. Hippies no longer dug us. Rednecks couldn't stand us either. Everybody hated us. We became isolated". During this period, Barger's main lieutenants were Sergey Walton, James "Jim-Jim" Brandes and Kenneth "K.O." Owen. A police report from April 1970 stated: "The subject [Barger] is influential with motorcycle clubs all across the nation. Barger has been unemployed for years and yet is seen with large amounts of money. The money may come from dues he collected from his own chapter and the franchise money he obtains from chapter charters he has sold in various states. It is known that all Hells Angels deal extensively in the narcotic trade". On April 11, 1970, Barger was arrested on narcotics charges after Donald Howarth, a film studio property manager and 1967 Mr. America from Studio City, was apprehended while walking towards Barger's home with a suitcase containing 17 ounces of cocaine and 30 ounces of heroin, with an estimated retail worth of $350,000. Barger temporarily resigned as president of the Oakland chapter in June 1970 to fight the charges, but returned to the position within months after his successor, John "Johnny Angel" Palomar, was sentenced to a ten-year prison term for shooting a bartender. The drug charges against Barger were later dismissed. He was, however, sentenced to ninety days in jail after walking out of a court session. Howarth was convicted and sentenced to serve five years-to-life in prison. On January 22, 1972, Barger and four other Hells Angels – Russell Beyea, Bobby "Durt" England, "Oakland" Gary Popkin and Bert Stefanson – were traveling through Redwood Regional Park in two cars, a Pontiac and a Cadillac, when they were pursued in a high-speed chase by park rangers, who suspected the occupants of the vehicles of poaching. The Pontiac struck a tree after its tires were shot out by pursuing park rangers, and England and Stefanson fled into the brush only to be apprehended later. Discovered in the trunk of the Pontiac were three club "prospects" – William Hood, Russell Huddleston and Danny Jarman. Hood and Jarman had been bound, gagged and beaten, while Huddleston had survived having his throat cut. Barger, Beyea and Popkin were arrested after the Cadillac was chased for four miles by converging police. Various objects were thrown from the Cadillac during the pursuit, including four handguns, a shotgun, surgical gloves, and a belt with an ammunition pouch and a silver buckle engraved with the caption: "Sonny Barger Jr., 1957–67 president, Hells Angels Oakland." Barger and the others were charged with attempted murder, kidnapping, and assault with a deadly weapon. Hood and Jarman told police that the incident was merely an initiation hazing. Amidst claims by the Hells Angels' attorneys, Jack Berman and Herman Mintz, of insufficient evidence and an illegal search by arresting officers, all five defendants pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of unlawful imprisonment. Along with fellow Hells Angels members Sergey Walton, Donald Duane "Whitey" Smith, and "Oakland" Gary Popkin, Barger was charged with the May 21, 1972 murder of Servio Winston Agero, a drug dealer from McAllen, Texas, who had traveled to Oakland with a consignment of narcotics for sale. The incident allegedly occurred following a dispute over an $80,000 cocaine deal. A prosecution witness, Richard Ivaldi, testified that he witnessed Barger shoot Agero dead as he slept at the home of an absent acquaintance, and that Barger subsequently ordered the others to set fire to the residence. According to Barger's chief attorney James Crew, Ivaldi himself was involved in the conspiracy to kill Agero and, knowing he was a prime suspect and fearing retaliation from the "Texas Mafia", he tried to shift the blame to the Hells Angels. Barger was also provided with an alibi from his girlfriend, Sharon Gruhlke, who claimed she was in bed with him at the time of the murder. The killing of Agero was one of five possibly linked murders committed in the area around that time. Three men – drug dealers Kelly Patrick Smith, Willard Thomas and Gary Kemp, an acquaintance of Ivaldi – were found shot to death in a house near San Leandro the day after Agero's murder, and the body of a woman, Karen S. Long, was discovered in the trunk of a car in Oakland on May 26, 1972. Ivaldi had led investigating detectives to the location of the automobile in which Long's corpse was found. John Joseph Devaney, Long's former husband, was also found dead in a car in Hayward on June 14, 1972, in an apparent suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. During the trial, Ted Hilliard, Barger's handler in the Oakland police, and Barger himself testified that he had been cooperating with police for over five years in return for deals on arrests, bail reductions and other considerations. Barger explained: "If we come into possession of guns and explosives, we don't like to keep them around. We turn them in hoping they – the police – will do something for us". He also admitted being a drug dealer under questioning from the prosecutor in the case, District Attorney Don Whyte. On December 29, 1972, Barger and his three co-defendants were acquitted following a seven-week trial after Ivaldi's credibility came under scrutiny. In December 1972, police bypassed a six-foot fence and Doberman Pinscher guard dogs to raid Barger's home in the Oakland Hills, finding eight guns throughout the house and an unidentified human skull on a dresser. At Barger's trial for narcotics and weapons offenses in February 1973, the jury was read Barger's testimony from his 1972 murder trial in which he admitted to dealing drugs. On March 16, 1973, he was sentenced to a prison term of ten years-to-life after he was convicted of possession of narcotics for sale (37 grams of heroin), and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon. His future wife Sharon was a co-defendant; her case ended in a mistrial when a jury failed to reach a verdict. As a result of his imprisonment, Barger was forced to relinquish his presidency of the Oakland chapter for the first time since its inception. According to police intelligence reports, he had designated San Jose chapter president Fillmore Cross as his international successor during a motorcycle run at Bass Lake prior to his imprisonment. Cross was also imprisoned, for possession of amphetamines in 1975, and Barger allegedly continued to lead the Hells Angels from his cell at Folsom State Prison. Hells Angels and members of other motorcycle gangs formed a clique in the California state prison system which acted somewhat autonomously from the Aryan Brotherhood, the dominant white prison gang in California. One prison official described the status of bikers in the prison system as: "They originally stay out of things. They provide a balance in the racial conflicts. When trouble starts with the Chicanos or the blacks, the Angels join up with the other whites". Barger befriended Mike "Acha" Ison, a leader in the Mexican Mafia, at Folsom. Barger began studying sociology in prison. During his incarceration, a bikers' magazine ran a "Free Sonny Barger" campaign, selling T-shirts and bumper stickers, which helped pay his legal expenses. Barger gave a series of interviews, including one with Geraldo Rivera for his Good Night America television program, in which he portrayed himself as a model prisoner and said: "They got to let me out sometime." In April 1977, Barger won an appeal to face a retrial on a prior marijuana possession conviction. His acquittal in that case made him eligible for parole as the California Supreme Court ruled that a five-year waiting period – attached to his sentence due to the prior marijuana conviction – was unconstitutional. He was paroled on November 3, 1977, after serving four-and-a-half years of his sentence. On December 5, 1977, Barger opened the first Hells Angels chapter in Canada in Montreal and awarded the Canadian Hells Angels national president Yves "Le Boss" Buteau the right to wear a Hells Angels jacket with the word "International" written on the bottom – a great honor within the world of the Hells Angels where jackets normally list only the state in which the Hells Angel lives in. On October 28, 1978, Barger opened the first Hells Angels chapter in the Netherlands with Willem van Boxtel serving as the president of the Amsterdam chapter. The Amsterdam chapter under Boxtel's leadership was to become the most powerful Hells Angel chapter in Europe. Barger was arrested on a parole violation charge of possession of firearms when police officers discovered a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol, a .38 caliber revolver, and a rifle after arriving at his Oakland home on March 27, 1978, to serve a subpoena and to conduct a parole search. The case was dismissed when Barger's wife Sharon testified that the guns belonged to her, not her husband.
