The Hells Angels might be the world’s most famous biker gang, but they’re not necessarily the most dangerous.
Meet the Pagans, a biker gang so gnarly that after going undercover with the outfit, one law enforcement official declared them even more extreme than the Hells Angels, describing them as ‘violent individuals’.
Founded almost ten years after the Hells Angels in 1959, the Pagans were once branded ‘the most violent crime organisation in America’ by the FBI and are often at the centre of violent clashes with their rival biker gang, normally in the form of turf wars.
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Earlier this year, agent Ken Croke, a former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agent, opened up about the two years he spent undercover with the Pagans.
He told the New York Post: “Pagan members sold crystal meth and guns, gang-raped women, brutalised rivals, and extorted businesses.”
He added: "The Hells Angels, in my opinion, they’re like a business. They have copyrights and doctors and lawyers who are members not involved in criminal activity.
“The Pagans are just violent individuals. They’re bad dudes. They don’t have two nickels to rub together but they don’t care. Hells Angels sleep in five-star hotels. Pagans sleep in dirt fields.”
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What’s more, Croke said the Pagans are just as active today as they ever were, sharing: “Pagans are riding the streets of New York City today, flying their colours. There are s**tloads of Pagans running around, actively recruiting and have been for years.”
Croke was clearly right, with violence between the two gangs erupting as recently as January 2020, when the Pagans allegedly shot up a Bronx neighbourhood after hearing that the Hells Angels had moved into the area.
Mel magazine called the incident ‘a reminder that the Bronx has long been known to be the Pagans’ turf’.
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Fourteen shots were fired into an abandoned American Legion hall in Throggs Neck, which was to be the Hells Angels’ new home in the New York neighbourhood.
Shortly afterwards, Francisco Rosado, who was in charge of the Pagans’ Bronx outfit, was shot in broad daylight in May 2020, in what MailOnline called ‘an apparent retaliation by the rival group’.
Two months later, Hells Angels members Frank Tatulli, 58, and Sayanon Thongthwath, 29, were arrested and charged with Rosado’s murder.
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Aisha Nozari