OUTLAWS TAPES RULED IN FOR TRIAL

Bugs, telephone taps on motorcycle gang leaders valid, magistrate says

Hundreds of hours of secret recordings in which Outlaws motorcycle gang
leaders allegedly talk about killings and other crimes in a gang war with
the rival Hell's Angels will be allowed as evidence in their trial later
this year.

U.S. Magistrate Judge William E. Callahan Jr. has ruled that electronic
bugs planted by federal agents in the Racine-area homes of two top
Wisconsin Outlaws -- including Kevin P. "Spike" O'Neill, president of the
Outlaws' Janesville chapter -- were not illegal. Callahan also ruled that
evidence from taps put on Outlaws' phones was admissible.

O'Neill, portrayed by prosecutors as the mastermind behind a string of
Outlaws murders, bombings and attempted murders aimed at Hell's Angels
trying to establish a foothold in the Midwest, was a key target of the
investigation, spearheaded by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms.

In an April 9, 1995, conversation, agents heard O'Neill complain about a
national meeting of Outlaws leaders where Outlaws from Tennessee and the
Carolinas said they would not go to war with the Hell's Angels in their
region because the Outlaws would lose.

On the tape, O'Neill also said he had been questioned on how the Midwest
war with the Hell's Angels started.

"I said them Angels were circling around us," the transcript quotes O'Neill
as saying. "I said if, if things wouldn't have started when they did,
there'd be, there'd be double the amount of Hell's Angels in Chicago right
now."

Prosecutors say O'Neill helped orchestrate the murders of three Hell's
Angels and affiliate members in New York, Chicago and Rockford, Ill., and
was behind a half-dozen bombings and attempted bombings of rival bikers and
their clubhouses from Minneapolis to Chicago.

On one tape, prosecutors say, O'Neill was caught saying: "I said when we
got into this club we were told you know, that any chance we got at them
(Hell's Angels) coming through our (expletive) state, to go for it. You
know, and that's the way I was brought up."

"A lot of them Southern brothers I think kind of resent me and our chapter
because they just figure that we started everything," O'Neill added,
according to the transcript.

On a March 29, 1995, recording, O'Neill and the vice president of the
Janesville Outlaws chapter, Robert "Clay" Kruppstadt, talk about
racketeering indictments against an Outlaws chapter in Florida.

O'Neill says: "I got my neck on the chopping block with (expletive) guys in
every chapter in this (expletive) region, you know. Call it luck or
whatever. Florida has always had a bad problem with rats. Always. Always."

In the same conversation, prosecutors say, O'Neill talks about melting down
guns after an unidentified individual "gets it" -- apparently a reference
to the June 1994 murder of LaMonte Mathias, a leader of the Rockford, Ill.,
chapter of the Hell's Henchmen, a motorcycle club allied with the West
Coast-based Hell's Angels.

Last June, federal prosecutors announced racketeering indictments against
17 Outlaws -- including the top leaders of Outlaws chapters in Janesville,
La Crosse, Chicago and Gary, Ind. -- and portrayed the Outlaws as a major
organized crime threat akin to traditional mob families.

Sixteen of the accused Outlaws have pleaded not guilty; one is still a
fugitive. O'Neill, who has been held without bond for the last year in the
Washington County Jail, says he and the entire Outlaws organization are
being made a "scapegoat" for the actions of a few rogue members.

William Marquis, O'Neill's attorney, could not be reached for comment
Friday. But federal prosecutor Eric Klumb said defense attorneys this week
filed motions asking for more time in what is expected to be an appeal of
Callahan's ruling.

O'Neill's lawyers argued in court that federal agents illegally placed a
"bugged" lamp in O'Neill's Mount Pleasant home just outside Racine before
obtaining the required court authorization to intercept conversations.

But federal prosecutors countered that the bug had not been turned on until
after a federal judge in Milwaukee in March 1995 authorized the intercepts.
Prosecutors also noted that O'Neill himself had brought the bugged lamp
into his home. The lamp had been provided through someone who, unknown to
O'Neill, had become a government informant.

Through the bugged lamp, ATF agents secretly recorded dozens of
conversations involving O'Neill and fellow Outlaws over the next month, and
transcripts of some of those taped conversations are being introduced in
federal court as evidence.

Callahan also ruled that law enforcement officers in Wisconsin, Illinois
and Indiana legally seized evidence in raids on close to a dozen Outlaws
clubhouses and homes. Handguns, rifles, bulletproof vests, drugs and drug
paraphernalia seized in the raids can be used as evidence at the Outlaws'
racketeering trial.

In a June 1997 court-authorized search of the Chicago-area home of Richard
Mroch, a member of the Chicago Outlaws chapter, police said they seized
four semiautomatic pistols, two revolvers, two shotguns, two cans of
gunpowder, a homemade pipe bomb and partial sticks of dynamite.

Police also said they found law enforcement fliers with detailed
information on members of the Hell's Angels in the Chicago area, radio
scanners for monitoring police frequencies and newspaper articles on
bombings and homicides involving the Hell's Angels and the Outlaws.

Attorneys for the Outlaws are expected to appeal Callahan's ruling to Chief
U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller, the judge assigned to the Outlaws
case, who has the final say on what evidence will be allowed at the trial.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski