‘F— around and find out’: Hells Angels racketeering trial ends with debate over murder, mayhem, and the law

SAN FRANCISCO — Three members of the Hells Angels are now at the critical juncture between federal prison and freedom. All that’s left is for a jury to decide their fate.

Starting Monday, 12 randomly-selected Northern California residents are set to review nearly two months of testimony surrounding the Sonoma Hells Angels and their associates at club chapters as far away as Salem, Mass.

The trial ended Friday after three days of closing arguments from federal prosecutors and defense attorneys, who presented wildly different interpretations of evidence that includes the testimony of former Hells Angels members and a onetime prospect who infiltrated the club while working as an FBI informant.

On trial are Raymond “Ray Ray” Foakes, perhaps the best-known living Hells Angel, as well as Christopher “Rain Man” Ranieri, the president of the club’s Boston/Salem chapter who is accused of helping plan a murder, and Brian Burke, a Sonoma chapter member who is accused of intimidating a potential witness after she was allegedly sexually assaulted by Foakes.

The allegations are stirring: a murder plot hatched on the East Coast, strategized in Antioch, and carried out in Fresno, where the unsuspecting victim was shot in the back of the head by a fellow Hells Angel, and then unceremoniously cremated in secret at a nearby funeral home; an hours-long beating in the heart of California’s wine country, capped off by a forcible tattooing of the victim’s face; a sexual assault followed up by a grave warning to the victim designed to shield the perpetrator from being brought to justice.

To the defense, it’s a manufactured case brought mostly by government witnesses who are either covering up for their own crimes — motivated by extreme personal animus, or driven to testifying to buy themselves a get-out-of-jail free card.

The trial was a near carbon-copy of one last year that ended with the convictions of three other men: Russell “Rusty” Ott, Jonathan “Jon Jon” Nelson, and Brian Wayne Wendt, all convicted of playing different roles in the murder of Joel Silva, a Hells Angel sergeant-at-arms. Ott lured Silva to the Fresno Hells Angels clubhouse, where Wendt shot him in the back of the head, after Nelson — the Sonoma president — signed off on the plot, according to prosecutors.

Speaking first to jurors this week, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nina Peng said the Hells Angels in Sonoma lived by the creed, “F— around and find out.” She said that violence was used as a tool to enforce rules between members, civilians, prospect, and anyone else who wronged the group for slights as trivial as looking at a member’s wife at a bar. She recounted beatings, extortion, witness intimidation, robberies, instances of Hells Angels running other motorcyclists off the road for passing them in traffic, among other alleged crimes.

“(Foakes) was the main guy. He was Mr. Hells Angel,” Peng told the jury, later adding, “He got respect by beating people, including other Hells Angels, down into submission.”

One such example came in November 2016, when Foakes and several other Hells Angels allegedly beat a fellow Sonoma-chapter member for hours, after it became known he’d had an affair with Foakes’ wife.

The man testified that the beating was capped off by Foakes allegedly tattooing his face, then leaving, sexually assaulting the man’s wife, and returning to brag about it. Burke is charged with intimidating the woman by making a gun symbol with his hands to warn her from testifying.

Albert Boro, Foakes’ lawyer, said the government had failed to implicate Foakes in either the beating or the sexual assault, but said that either way, the beating wasn’t a federal crime. He questioned that if Foakes was really “Mr. Hells Angel,” why he would need to assault someone in order to maintain or improve his rank in the club, which is a required element for a RICO conviction.

“This was a personal matter. This was the Hatfields and the McCoy…We have really just a personal dispute between two people,” Boro said, later adding that the personal problem between Foakes and the alleged victim gave the latter an even bigger reason to lie on the stand.

Rainieri’s lawyer, meanwhile, argued that Joseph Hardisty — a former Richmond Hells Angel who has testified for the prosecution about the Silva murder — is a habitual liar who admitted to seeking movie and magazine deals to tell his story as a member of a biker gang.

Hardisty testified in the Ott/Nelson/Wendt trial, where prosecutors argued his story was backed up by other evidence. This time around, Hardisty told the same story on the witness stand but added that he thought federal authorities “sucked a–” and left him hanging after his cooperation.

Erik Babcock, who represents Burke, argued the story of alleged witness intimidation was “completely uncorroborated” and that the government’s case amounted to a person making a gesture while coincidentally passing the witness’s car on a Sonoma County street.

“Yeah (Burke) is a member of the Sonoma Chapter of the Hells Angles, but that doesn’t make him guilty,” Babcock said. “Every member of the club is entitled to be judged on what they did, and what they were thinking when they did it.”