Riding With Evil: Taking Down the Notorious Pagan Gang

by Ken Croke

Today, ATF doesn’t allow supervisors to go undercover at all, largely because of my story.

“Ken, I don’t know about this, man,” Andy told me. “I’m not so sure HQ is going to approve you to go try and infiltrate a club that just killed its last prospect.

The only good that came of that weekend: I did learn how to grill. They may have been horrible humans, but, man, they were barbecue experts.

I went to several other Pagan funerals with the club, but the one that stands out the most is when I went to Pennsylvania for the funeral of a Mennonite Pagan who died in prison after serving forty years for a horrible rape and murder.

The Pagans were true-crime junkies and watched all those news shows: 60 Minutes, 20/20, Dateline. They picked up law enforcement tactics from the shows and gained intel on how to avoid making mistakes that would get them busted. The Pagans were students of crime and biker culture. Many of them read biker undercover books, like Billy Queen’s Under and Alone and Sonny Barger’s famous book, Hell’s Angel. And yes, they loved the biker TV series Sons of Anarchy. I watched many episodes with Hogman, Roadblock, J.R., and the rest of them. I can’t think of a more surreal moment in my life than being an undercover fake biker watching a show about a fictitious biker gang with a bunch of real outlaw bikers.

I did find it funny that they thought a shrink would be effective. I had just finished fooling one thousand Pagans for nearly two years. I think I could have fooled one shrink.