Game of Crimes
153: Part 2: Billy Queen – A lifetime of working undercover with ATF and joining the Mongols
[Music] Now before we, uh, before we got started with our conversations today, Billie and I were just touching on a couple different things and he mentioned something to me that I was not aware of that he had worked against a group called the National Alliance. And what was that guy's name that, uh, Timothy, what's his name? Oh, Timothy McVey. Yeah, so this picked my interest because if you know, if you're not familiar with Timothy McVey, it has to do with the Oklahoma City bombing. So, tell us about how you got involved with that, Billie. Um, that was getting handed off from one hate group to another. One anti-government group to another, uh, the Ku Klux Klan actually introduced me into the National Alliance. And I really didn't know who the National Alliance was at that time. I was wanting an introduction from the Ku Klux Klan out in North Carolina to the Klan in California, but I got introduced to a guy that was in charge of the West Coast chapter of the National Alliance. And as it turned out, the National Alliance was one of the most, if probably not the most organized, well-funded anti-government white supremacy groups in the country. They were a real threat. They had more than a 300 acre compound out in West Virginia. And they had a publishing company and it was being ran by William Pierce, who was a PhD and not a PhD in basketball even, but a PhD in, like, um, physics. Wow. So, he's a very smart guy. Very interesting. And he had really built that organization. And, uh, when I got to looking into it, I saw how significant they were in it. And it was a significant, um, group that needed attention. Mm-hmm. So, I was going to get in, undercover, and, uh, find out just exactly what they were doing throughout the United States. Um, one thing led to another, and to make a long story short, Steve, I made friends with William Pierce, the guy that, um, organized and ran the National Alliance, and had met with him several times, talked with him and talked with his organization back in West Virginia numerous times. And the last time that I talked with William Pierce, he came out to Los Angeles and I met with him at a motel there, along with several other people from California. And he said, Billy, he said, "I'd like for you to come out and work in our headquarters in, uh, West Virginia. Mm-hmm. I want you to be quiet right now. I don't want to bring any attention to the National Alliance. We won't, we just want to be quiet, Billy. And the reason for that, something big is about to happen. And, uh, I had no idea what he was talking about. Right. But I went back after that meeting and, uh, made a request of ATF to go back to West Virginia to work in, uh, an undercover capacity with the National Alliance in their headquarters section. Well, my request was answered by ATF with a shut the investigation down. And I, and I had spent months working my way into this group. And so I challenged them, which was a, a very good thing to do. I never was on the hit parade with the administration in ATF. Uh, but I had to shut the investigation down. Shortly after that, Timothy McVeigh blew the Murrow Federal Building to tell him come. And, uh, I knew that William Pierce was talking about what, um, Timothy McVeigh was going to do. When they actually stopped Timothy McVeigh beside him in the car was a copy of this, the Turner Diaries. And there's a chapter in this book about blowing up Federal Building or blowing up the FBI Building in Washington, D.C. Timothy McVeigh was mimicking or using the Turner Diaries as his Bible. And he did what they had done in the, in the term Turner Diaries, what William Pierce had pretty much put out there, that this was, this was his Bible. This is what he thought should be done in the United States. And this is what ended up happening. And I knew exactly what William Pierce had told me. If the Bureau of ATF had not shut me down and I had gone out there, I am at least convinced of my own heart. William Pierce would have told me that that big thing that was about to happen was Timothy McVeigh was going to blow the, the Murrow Building to Sky High. So I ended up having to deal with that with all those people dying. And we had a chance to stop it. That was swept under the rug faster than anything. Never heard of it. Nobody ever knew that we had an investigation against the National Alliance. And that we had been told, not specifically that Timothy McVeigh was going to blow that building in Sky High, but that William Pierce told us right before it happened. That something big is about to happen. Don't do anything. Don't bring any attention to us. But something big is going to happen, Billy. William Pierce knew it. Those people back in, I don't know how many of them, but people back there in in West Virginia in the National Alliance headquarters knew it. Unfortunately, we should have known it, but our investigation was shut down. It was shut down by Janet Reno. Janet Reno shut all the intelligence gathering investigations down in the United States. It wasn't just ATF, but ATF, FBI, DEA, shut them all down. And as a result, Holy cow. So this occurred on April 19th, 1995 and 168 innocent people died that day. And we had, we potentially had the opportunity to stop it. Nobody knew it. Nobody knew that this investigation had happened. You know, I had never, until you told me about this morning, before we started this interview, I had never, I knew nothing about the National Alliance. And I certainly didn't know about what you're telling us now. There are ever any repercussions against Reno or anybody else in Washington, ATF headquarters. That whole thing got, now this is what I heard. I was so angry. I was so angry for so long. So finally, the upper management people said, hey, look, Janet Reno shut all the investigations down. If you didn't have a specific crime that you were looking at, Janet Reno said shut them down, which included this investigation. She said that, you know, she said, I was told that the FBI had it until undercover thing going and they got caught. They got caught by the group that they were investigating. And they bitched it all the way up to the Department of Justice and Janet Reno, when they got to her desk and they made their evaluation. They just said, shut them all down. Not just the FBI investigation that got compromised, but anybody, ATF DEA, accustomed to anybody, that's doing investigative work for intelligence purposes, shut them down. Oh, when that blue sky, huh? I mean, I knew it. When a blue sky, I knew it. I knew what happened. When they set up the Command Center there in Oklahoma City, I called them up and I said, this is who you're going to be looking for. This is who you're going to be looking for. That's Pierce. They said that I was told right then at that time, oh, no, the FBI's got somebody there. They're on an airplane going to some other country and I was told, we got them. So I said to myself, okay, I'm wrong, but it didn't turn out to be that way. When they called, when they called Timothy McVay and I don't know how many people knew it, but they picked up that copy of the Turner diaries sitting right beside of him. Did you did after the bombing? Did you reach out? Do you have any more contact with Pierce? Oh, Lord, Lord, no, Lord, no, I, um, that investigation went away. I mean, they swept that whole thing under the rug. Janet Reno made that call and all those people died as a result of. We didn't have the intel and that we could have had and could have stopped it. So what do you think the government did? Yeah. They just shut it all down. See why here's that point. Pardon me? See why at that point on their point. See why at that point. Yeah, you're right. Yep. Now you're holding up a copy of the Turner diaries there. How did you come about that? Well, when I was undercover on the National Alliance and I had met, uh, William Pierce numerous times. Well, one of the times that I met him, uh, I got him to sign the book for me. I got it from him and he signed it. Revolutionary regards to Bill St. John, a true comrade. That was 7, that was 7, 17, 94. And so April 95 is when the bombing happened. Yeah. And the last time I had met with him, um, which when he told me that that's something big was going to happen. And, uh, my membership booked to the National Alliance. And he actually, he had actually written several books. Here's another one. Regarding Revolutionary regards to Bill St. John. His other book. Hunter. We had them. We had them. We had the National Alliance. We knew that that's something big was going to happen. We knew it just before he blew the building. Sky freaking out and he had that copy with him when he was put under arrest. Okay. So, I mean, all of a sudden you just stopped showing up at the National Alliance because Miss Reno has shut everything down. Does he reach out to you or anybody from the National Alliance reach out to you afterwards? Uh, I've stayed in touch with, you know, this was a long time ago now. Uh, and I did stay in touch with him for a while. But, you know, they told me to shut the investigation down. I just had to shut it down. You know, I had undercover phones. Of course that I was dealing with them with. And I'm in California and they're in West Virginia. So it just kind of went away. And I waited. And I waited for them to put two and two together, but they were never going to do that. Because if they did, they were going to know that the federal government had a good idea that that was going to happen. Specifically the outcome of a body, which you knew something significant was going to happen somewhere in the country. Yeah, but yeah. That's right. That's right. Nothing allowed him. And plausibly they could dance their way around that. But in reality, William Pierce tells me don't do anything to bring any attention to us. And then boom, it happens. And when they arrested Timothy McVey, he's got a copy of that sitting right beside of him in the seat of his car. Did anything ever happen to Pierce afterwards after the Oklahoma City bombing? You know, Pierce died of natural causes seemingly not too long after the bombing. Yes, man. But so if they had allowed you to continue working at an uncover and see what you could gleaned. I mean, we're talking so that was roughly what seven months later in April of '95. You know what? Let me see if I have pictures of me and William Pierce together. If you'd have been allowed to continue working that, you'd have certainly gotten more and more inside the inner circle. Had they allowed me to go back to West Virginia? I'm convinced now, of course, Steve, I don't know. But I'm trusted enough for him to bring me back to his place. Right. When I got back there, I felt like he would have told me what was going to happen. Yeah, you'd have been part of the inner sanctum there. Yeah, yeah. That's not something you ask for. That's something he offered to you. Yes. Yeah. Wow, that's a revelation here. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. And I'm, like I said, I don't know how much I should say here. No, if you're not comfortable, don't say it. Yeah. We're not here to get anybody in trouble, but it is extremely opening. What could have been, you know, and it seems to be, that seems to happen frequently in these big national investigations when there's national disasters, man-made disasters because of terrorist activities where some agencies know things, but the leadership of those agencies won't allow it to be shared. Yeah. And I'm not saying that ATF knew. I mean, you're saying that Janet Reno, the attorney general of the United States, I knew her when she was the district attorney in Dade County, Florida. Yeah. In fact, when my partner was shot in 1989 and her opponent was killed in the shoot out, she was the district attorney. And she brought us all up before federal, I'm not a federal, but a state grand jury in Dade County to see if they found any grounds to prosecute us. This is after. Wow. I mean, it's a bad day to take around that day. Obviously, Janet Reno didn't have a clue what was going on. And she made the call that she made, shut all this investigation down. But when it did happen, it was like there's no way in the world they're going to want that information out there that ATF actually had an investigation and had somebody inside. Yeah. The national alliance when Timothy made believe that building's got in it. And, um, I don't, um, I still have copies of some of that. Yeah. Yeah. I had, I made copies for myself because I had no idea how that was going to turn out. Right. But like I said, that whole thing got swept under the rug overnight. Well, I mean, all I can say right now is thank you for sharing it with us. I had no clue whatsoever. And, uh, I mean, you never know who's listened to a game of crimes podcast here. So, you know, some people may hear this and they want to reach out to you and, and do something with that story. You just never know. Yeah. But, uh, gosh, that is so scary because that was an event that just devastated our country and then to find out it wasn't a foreign terrorist group. It was a domestic terrorist group. And I, I knew it when it happened. I knew it when it happened to call them up, called up the command center there in Oklahoma. And I told them, and I told them, you know what, you got that copy, uh, uh, from McVeigh. Well, it's before McVeigh was, was captured. I told them, you're looking for homegrown people here. Yeah. You're looking for homegrown people here to get a copy of the Turner Divers and turn to such and such a page where they blow the federal building up. Wow. This is who you're looking for. Oh, no, no, no, the FBI's got a target slanted in the UK or somewhere. I said, no, no, no, no, I don't think so. Nope. Hell, we lose. We were warned before it happened by Mr. William Pierce, what a shame, what a shame. I had to live with that for years, Steve. Yeah. Well, I can tell, when we first started talking about it before we started this interview, you know, you can still see in your face as we're talking that it, it's still lingers. Yes. You know, there's just certain things that you never forget through at your career. And you know, for so many innocent people and, you know, not to keep opening up an old wound here, but we remember that there was a child, there was a daycare center in that building where numerous little children were killed. It's just reminiscent of things that were going on in Columbia back during the Escobar days. What a, what a freaking shame. I don't even know what I'll say. God bless those people and their families. So I'm having to deal with that anyway, you know, there were a lot of things that undercover stuff that there was a lot of things that people don't know in the Iran Contradill that was going on was back there and was back before this time out in L.A. and I'll, are you ready for another one? Are you ready for another one? Well, hey, revelation day, let's go. There was a lot of gun running to Central America because of the communists, Daniel Ortega in his group and the Cubans and the Contras backed by Ali North and the Americans fighting the communists in Central America. They needed guns. They needed guns. Of course, the movie that came out of American made, Tom Cruise movie. That was all going on when I was an ATF agent there. And I had a connection with the AP that came to me and said, Billy, I can set you up with a meeting with Commander Zero from the Contras and he can tell you all about the gun running from America down there to Central America, the communist side to Daniel Ortega in the group. Daniel Ortega was coming up to California doing fundraisers and the Hollywood crowd was back in the communist and Daniel Ortega. We got a call one day, Steve. The girl that wrote the book, Yental, she called and she couldn't live with what was going on, making a long story short. What is going on? This Hollywood group is planning to blow up barracks at Fort Bragg, North Carolina that were training troops fighting the communists down in Central America. It was like, what? I'm talking to this guy and he said, yeah, I've got this girl that's inside this Hollywood group and this is their plan. We're putting together a plan to blow up the barracks housing these troops from Central America being trained by the Special Forces to fight that war down there. Well, of course, you know, you get information like that. That's got to be bullshit. That's suspect. Yeah. So me and I tell my group supervisor, this is what I just got and this guy says he'll introduce me to the girl, the girl that wrote the book, Yental and she'll lay it all out to you. So me and another agent, well, Rodriguez, go over to this girl's house. She lays it out. Now you're ready for this. Ed Asner, the head writers for Walt Disney and this particular group are all involved in this conspiracy and I said, this is bullshit. This can't be true. And I said, I want you to get on the phone and I want you to call whoever is at the top, whether it's Ed Asner, whether it's the writers for Walt Disney, I want you to get them on the phone and I want to hear the conversation myself. They're at her house. She dials up. The head writers of Florida, I don't remember their name, it's been a long time ago. They get on the phone. The first thing they do is jump on her. You freaking bitch. You probably with the cops right now. You probably blowing this whole damn thing sky behind me and I heard that and I looked at the other agent and I said, this is real Ed Asner, this girl that wrote the book Yental and these people, head writers from Disney are all planning to blow the damn barracks up. They got people that are going to blow the barracks at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, holy crap. So when the phone call was over, I said, we got to write this thing up. We got to do all the requests that we need to request. We're going to get this girl to take me inside Hollywood group and I'm going to become part of this operation and we're going to, well, the next day she disappeared. For after a couple of months, we fought, they killed her. They did, they killed her, but she got scared and left the country. The writers for Walt Disney sold out, packed her shit and were gone within a week. Wow. Now I had to let people know several times how Ed Asner and this group were all planning to blow the damn barracks up at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Did they really think they could get on the base and do that? Well Fort Bragg back then was open. Oh, really? Oh, Fort Bragg was an open base. You could drive right on with a deuce and a half full of C4. Oh, believable. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I regularly listen to me pontificate about this before, about how we kind of call them the pretty people. The famous people who, you know, their, their career is pretending to be somebody else now because they've been successful all of a sudden they're smarter than all of us. They're wealthier. You know, they're, they think their money makes them smarter and they have better ideas. If you want to be a communist, go live in a communist country. You know, why do you want to change our country? Yeah. I mean, you know, we're still the great. It was screwed up as we are right now. I believe we're still the greatest country in the world. We got a lot of room for improvement here, but why do you want to screw something up? It's working for everybody else. There's a lot of people here that believe in that socialism, communism stuff. Lots and lots of men and there's a lot of them that's in their government. They believe in it. Yeah. Oh, it just so it didn't work in these countries doesn't mean it won't work in ours. Well, man, it sounds like a drug legalization, doesn't it? You know, you look at all these other countries that have tried it and hasn't worked anywhere yet. And by the way, if anybody wants to disagree with me about, you know, say, check out Portugal, it didn't work. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I was on another podcast one time and that was some of the, you know, you're not supposed to ever read comments online, but I can't help myself. And somebody, you know, he obviously, he's old school, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Look at the movement in Portugal. How well it's working. It didn't work. It didn't work. So. Yep. All right. Well, Dave, what a revelation here. This is a surprise as we go, but now I want to get over to where, and this is the real reason I want to get you on is to talk about your undercover life. And we're talking, I believe, 28 months. Is that right? With the Mongols. Yeah. And for talking the Mongols, one of the most violent, if not the most violent, outlaw motorcycle gang in the United States with foreign chapters as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that's what his book, Under and Alone, is, and if you can see this here, I'm holding it up now. You can see I got the red tabs there where there are things that I want to ask Billy about as we go along here. But how did you, what was the first thing that happened to get your attention on the Mongols? And then what went through your mind that, okay, yeah, I'm going to go join these dirt bags for the next however long it takes? Well, at the time, on this surface, I was riding undercover with the Hell's Angels. Which is our enemies of the Mongols. Our enemies with the Mongols, yes, sir. And the San Fernando Valley chapter of the Hell's Angels, and Ventura. And John Cicone, the case agent, ATF case agent, came to me because the Mongols were wreaking havoc in Los Angeles. Ordinarily, these groups will hang out in a particular area where they're kind of accepted. Right. But the Mongols were now going down to Hollywood, and they were going into clubs down to Hollywood and where people didn't know them, and they would challenge them, and the Mongols would just beat the crap out of them, stab them, and in some cases, shoot them. And they were doing that to the point where the Los Angeles Police Department ended up coming to ATF and said, we've got to do something. These guys are wreaking too much havoc in LA. And to make a long story short, John Cicone came to me and said, why don't you give up riding with the Hell's Angels, start riding with the Mongols. The Mongols are creating a lot more havoc in Los Angeles than the Hell's Angels are. Now, we need somebody that can go undercover, and there was nobody else that could actually do it at the time. You're going to have to have a significant undercover background to do it, and by that time I've been working undercover for 17 years, and I had a significant undercover background. But pretty much what had done it was a couple of stabins in the clubs on Hollywood Boulevard, and then they ended up shooting a dude in another confrontation over on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, right where the Rose Parade is held every year. They ended up getting into a shootout in a club, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. The cops roll, everybody runs, and the cops think, oh, it's all over with, when the sun comes up, there's a dead guy across the street, and so it was like, enough, enough. We got to do something. So, Secconi called me, I met with him, and he had information that he laid out to me about the Mongols, and it was alarming. They were violent. They were very violent. They were good for murders from the Los Angeles area down to San Diego. And foolishly, like I always do, I said, okay, well, I got to ask you. So, you're working against the ATAs in San Fernando Valley chapter, and now you're going to work against the Mongols in the San Fernando Valley chapter. Well, you're not worried that the ATAs might recognize you? Yeah, I was worried about that. So it was ATF. Yeah. And see, that investigation, the IRS, the Ventura County Sheriff's Department, and ATF had teamed up against the Hells Angels, and they came to me and asked me if I would ride with the Hells Angels, gather information, and that's how I ended up getting involved in that one. But then everybody was pushing a, we got to do something about the Mongols, you're the only one now that can do it. And that's not the, at that time, we had ATF agent Darren Kozlowski. He had been undercover with the Vagos, but he was lucky that he wasn't killed in that operation. So, so how long had you been working on the HAs before you went over to the Mongols? Thinking I was probably riding with the HAs for probably about around two months, maybe a little longer than two months. Okay. So you got some time invested, but not a, not like a year. No. No. Okay. So I knew it was going to be a problem. John Cicone, the case agent, knew that that was going to be a problem. And so I thought, well, I'll, I'll just stay clear. We had a particular place in Chatsworth, California that we would go at, Hells Angels hung out at the Candy Cat down there. And that was pretty much their little stronghold. And I thought so as long as we can avoid that, you know, we probably get away with it. So we decided to do it. And I got an introduction in a place called The Place in Tohanga, California, just, just Northern side of LA, Hannah, I was introduced in by a girl that was a serious tweaker at the time and a serious method. Yeah. But she really wanted to help. She had her own little personal thing. We knew that's, that's a tough way to go. We were going to do an introduction and then we were going to get this girl out of there. I mean, completely out of the area. ATF was going to put her in some kind of a place up in San Francisco area and one of those and don't come back. Yeah. So got introduced in one night at the place to everybody there that was at the place and that night there was a couple of guys from the Mongols that were there. Rocky was one of them and Rancid was the other one. Nice name. Yeah. Rocky and Rancid. They weren't exactly friendly. They were, they were playing the badass part, biker thing and, and they were, I'm not saying that they weren't. Yeah. They were and they were dressed down the way that the Mongols dressed down. They're carrying big old knives on their sides. Rancid's got spikes on his boots where he kicked people in a fight and rip them up. And both of them got real long greasy hair and they mean they looked apart. Well, they were wearing the colors, their vest. Yeah. They were wearing the colors. Yeah. Their bikes were outside. My bike was out there and they were there playing the part except they weren't playing. Yeah. And all I wanted that the first night was just like an introduction. This is Billy St. John and I have a few beers and go out the door and I show up the next time by myself, it's Billy St. John and that's kind of like the introduction. But it's going to take a lot more than just an introduction. Yeah. Those guys are not going to want anything to do with you. I had to go back month after month after month and work my way in and pretty much it came down to, you know, shooting pool, buying them a beer every now and then, playing pool against them, win some, lose some one night. There was a guy in the bar and he was just as drunk as he could be. Make a long story short. He wanted a fight and there was really in certain instances like that, there's nothing you're going to do. You're going to fight. And so I ended up getting into a fight with this guy and he's drunk on his ass and wasn't that much of a problem. And I beat the guy down and the Mongols were there. They liked it. You know, that's entertaining in places like that. That's just entertainment. Yeah. So they were entertained for a couple of minutes in it with a fight. But after that, within a week or so, Mongol came up to me and said, "Hey Billy, won't you ride with us down to this other club?" Sundowner and Danga. And at that point, I had become an official hang around with them. They wanted to look at me. They wanted to know who I was. So I actually started riding with the Mongols. Yeah. Can you explain what the significance is of a hang around? A hang around is somebody that they will accept into the club at a certain point. They're not going to let you in on anything, but they'll let you ride with them. Okay. And you can hang out with them in clubs and stuff like that. And they do that for the purpose of looking at you closer to see if you're the kind of person that they won't end in the gang, plus they try to find out as much as they can about you. Right. So during this time, are you going home to your normal residence every night? At that time, no, I'm not going home every night. We had started to establish ourselves. I had an undercover pad in Diamond Bar. I actually lived in Upland. I had a house and I had a girlfriend at the time. She lived at that house. I would not ever go meet with the Mongols and just go to my home. No way. They could be following me home. If I met with the Mongols, I'm going back to my undercover pad. And I did that for some months before one day, Domingo, the president of the San Fernando Valley chapter came to me and said, we want you to be a Mongol. We want you to prospect into the gang. And I put him off and I don't want to just say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm ready to go stuff. And you know, I kind of put him off. And so one day it was the Fourth of July party at the place. I got there early. I was just going to drink some beers and hang out with the Mongols and everybody else. So this big party, Domingo rolled up on his motorcycle. He got off the bike. He walked up to me and he threw me a vest, boom, on the backside of that vest that had California on it, a California rocker. And he said, Billy, put this on. If I put that on, that would have meant that I become a prospect for the Mongols. Well, I did. My whole life changed. Now I'm going to do anything that any Mongol tells me to do from wiping butts to murder. I put that jacket on. My life changed. I didn't go back home again. I had two kids. I was divorced from my wife. My kids didn't live that far away from my real house. But at that point, they gave me a three-page enrollment application. More involved than any law enforcement application that I had ever filled out. More so than the SF86, the dreaded SF86. Yeah, well, this one, they didn't ask you for your high school yearbook. They didn't ask you for your teacher's names. They didn't ask you for all your brothers and sisters' names and phone numbers and addresses and where you live from the time that you were a baby to up to now. All the employment stuff, military stuff, everything, they wanted to know everything. And they're going to turn that over to a private investigator. When that happened every day that I rolled in, I looked at them butty to see whether their faces had changed. See if they were looking at me with a different look, a different eye, wondering whether that private investigator come up with something that we didn't have covered or something. Now early on, they may have just beat me and threw me out but as time went on and violations occurred in front of me and things begin to change too because people now had things to lose if I ended up being a cop. So it got even more nerve-wracking. And as days went by, as weeks went by, this guy's still looking. They said, "We set people up in the school system out here in North Carolina because North Carolina didn't want to go along with any kind of an undercover operation like that, the school system." So we ended up having to put agents in the schools to answer phones that might come in in reference to Billy St. John and it did. And it did. Yes. Wow. So ATF covered that out here and once that happened, and of course the agents were pulled out, didn't have to continue doing that, but everything came back to North Carolina. We had police agencies. There was a police officer or there may have been a couple, I don't know, but they were covering me as far as my criminal background because I had a lot of petty stuff. You know, assaults and public drunk and crap like that, you know, felony stuff. But the record was there that they could find, and they did. And the phone calls, the phones that were set up to cover my family and stuff like that, you know, they called everybody. They looked in to everything, but they could not find anything that said something was different than what I turned into, but they were always people that were in the club. See, I didn't grow up with them. I wasn't in jail with any of them. I didn't go to prison with any of them. I just kind of wandered into town. So there were people that were suspicious the whole time, but everything that I told them turned out to be just like I told them, except, you know, they came to me one day and said, something's wrong. What do you mean? We ran your driver's license and you don't have a motorcycle endorsement. So what? To pull my driver's license out and ride all my driver's licenses is a motorcycle endorsement. And every time they call you in because of something like that, it's like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Did they catch me? Did they know who I am? But they never did. They never called me, but it was one challenge after another because they were beating people up and I went to the United States Attorney's office and I asked for guidance. I said, look, these guys are running dope. They're stealing people's motorcycles. They're beating people up out here. Give me some advice here. What am I supposed to do when they start beating people up? They're going to expect me to be beating those people up along with them. What am I supposed to do when they steal somebody's motion? They're going to expect me to help them steal his motorcycles. They're going to want me to run the dope and the two U.S. attorneys that were talking to was sitting there at the desk listening to me and on the other side, they were doing this. At that time, they said, you'd be the best witness that you can be. I made my own line in the sand and it was murder and rape. Obviously I wasn't going to participate in rape. Obviously I wasn't going to kill anybody for this club, but anything else that came up, I was going to do what I had to do to get into the club. I did. As a prospect, you're on call 24/7 for these people, right? You're on call 24/7. That's right. You're a do boy for them. I was told, look, Billy, it's not just San Fernando Valley chapters. They need you down in LA, if they need you out in Pico, if they need you in Riverside and stuff, somebody calls you, you get on that bike and you go. You're going to be prospect. It's 24/7 when I put those things on. It was open to, well, let me tell you this, I was in the club one night, Domingo comes up to me and somebody had been, let's see what I'm trying to use an acceptable term here. Okay. My ad dog in Domingo, Domingo said, go take care of that guy over there, sitting at the bar. I said, okay, I went over there and I got in the guy's face and I said, you got about 30 seconds to get your ass up off. I still don't get the out of here or I'm going to beat the living shit out of you. Well, he did. He got up because I'm a prospect for the Mongols. He's in this place. He knows. He got no alternative but to leave. So he gets up and he leaves and I was thinking, yeah, I took care of business, buddy. And I went back over there and Domingo reached me to ride act. He's like, if I tell you to go take care of business, you knocked a motherfucker off the stool. You cold cock his ass and I'm like, okay, I learned. That's what you do. Okay. So violence, you got to be willing to get into the violence. And like the US attorneys all said, you don't start anything. Let them start it. If you got to react, react to be the best witness you can be. But if it comes down to that, you knock the shit out of the dude. And I ended up after fight after fight after fight with these guys and clubs. Now it's a scary thing because I'm used to fighting with somebody and hey, when they say, okay, I've had enough, it's enough. But that ain't the way that it goes with these guys. They want to beat you to unconsciousness. And I was worried multiple times that I was going to end up in the middle of a murder because of that. And I had to answer that in court too, when it came to court, Mr. Queen, you are out there beating people just like my client, weren't you, Mr. Queen. And I had to say, yeah, I jumped in on that fight. But if I had not gotten in there, your client would have killed them, object, object. And they did that. They did that a few times until every time that that came up, I said the same thing. Had I not been involved, your client would have killed them. But that's how it was for rolling around for the next two years. They're going to fight. They're going to beat people up. They're going to haul dope. They're going to steal motorcycles. They're going to kill people and they're going to rape women. We lucked up time after time after time on the rape and the murder. Did the murder people? Oh, yeah, they murdered people. Did they rape women? Oh, yeah, they raped women. I just, we just lucked out time after time that we just weren't right there in the middle of a murder or in the middle of a rape situation. Well, I know from reading your book that they were insisting on you using drugs. So how did you handle that? The very first time that happened was out in Loughland. I was in the room with Rocky and his wife and Rocky opens a bag up and he lines out two lines of methamphetamine and he snorted up one line of methamphetamine, then he turned at me with that knife. He opened a bag out and he stuck that knife in my face and said, "Is that lying too much for you?" And it was like, "Oh, it's showtime, buddy." Because in reality, you can't do dope and be an ATF agent. You'll take a random drug test. You could take it at any time and because you're in the cover, doesn't exclude you from taking a random drug test, you don't pass, you're not an agent anymore. Yep. Same in DEA. Yeah. So I'm walking around the room and I walked into the bathroom because if I get challenged real heavy, my face turns red. My ears will turn red first. I looked in the mirror and I see myself turning red. Well, when I walk back out, I roll up a dollar bill and Rocky and his old lady are sitting on the bed over here and the table with the dope, I walked in between them where they couldn't see me and I bent over and went like I was snorting that up and I wiped that line of methamphetamine up in my hand and some of it hit the floor and I stood on top of it and Rocky got up and he looked at the table, he saw the line gone and it was a pad of me on the back. Yeah. And I went, yeah, and he walked outside and there was a group of mongrels out there and I could see he went out there and said he did it. He did it. So that was a challenge for test and then when I went outside, they were all patting me on the back. Yeah. Yeah. Come on, Billy. Let's party, buddy. One party after another after another, but here's a good thing about being a prospect. They don't want you doing drugs. They don't want you getting drunk because they want you to look after them. Your security, you're the one that's bringing them the dope and the beer and cleaning the bikes and everything else that they want you to do. Well, if you're drunk on your ass, you can't do that. Right. So you, they can drink all they want to. They can do lines of coke or meth or whatever, but they don't want you doing it because you got to look after them. So how long were you a prospect before they approached you about actually becoming a member? Well, they don't do it like that. They have a three piece patch. You're a prospect when you have that lower rocker on. Now I got my center patch because of an incident one night, a fight incident. We're at the sundown. No, no, no, I'm sorry. We're at a club over in the, the valley area and long about midnight, it was a let's go back over to Hill to Tonga, go to the sundowner over there and finish partying. We went over there. The place was full, absolutely full. When we walked in, now I didn't have a patch on. We had been in clubs where you couldn't wear a patch in the club. So none of us had patches on. We walked in the club. There was a gun leaning up against the ice machine and he said something to Domingo's old lady. I couldn't hear it because it was loud inside, but I knew it wasn't good because Domingo turned around and squared off on the dude and the guy said, "What are you looking at?" And Domingo hit him, "Bam, knock this dude up against the ice machine." Well, the bouncer was standing there and he jumps on Domingo, holds Domingo. This guy came back off of that ice machine and he was going to hit Domingo. Now I'm standing there, I'm security, he's the chapter president. So I jumped in and bam, I hit this guy and he goes down in the floor. Now I'm trying to make it look good, you know, and I'm well on the back of this guy's head and it's hurting my knuckles worse than it's hurting his head. I know it. But what I didn't know, there was another group of mongrels inside there. Well, of course they knew us. One of them comes running across the floor and puts a boot in this guy's face. Bam, kicks him like he's kicking a 50 yard field goal and his head recalled up where I had hold of him and so I started to try to drag this guy outside so they wouldn't kick his head in and every time I took a step dragging this guy, this mongrel beside of him putting a boot to his head, bam, bam, and I'm thinking, oh my God, oh, and I drag him outside and he collapsed and I'm thinking, oh God, oh God, oh God, because everybody in the place saw me hit the guy. If this guy dies, I'm going to end up going down for murder with the rest of these guys. So he shook it off and jumped up and he took off running to me and these mongrels are chasing him. You better run. He got away, good thing, and I come back, I'm all out of breath. I put my arm around Domingo and Domingo's good job prospect, good job and we're walking on our way back inside. There was another guy there that didn't like what he saw because I don't have a mongrel jacket on. Domingo doesn't have his mongrel cut on. You got your middle patch now, you got two out of three. I got that middle patch for defending the president of the San Fernando Valley chapter. Yeah. But it was only another fight out of multiple fights that I ended up getting into. Most of these guys, they operate on the edge, I mean, operate on the edge of sanity. At least I was the best prospect they ever had. I did exactly what I was told to do. I didn't want to have to prospect for a whole year. So I was doing everything that I was asked to do, had to do. Luckily we got out of it and killed somebody. Obviously I wasn't going to do that anyway, but the challenge was there. So one day I got a call when they come on up to the place and I rolled on my motorcycle and got up there. There was already a half a dozen motorcycle, mongrel motorcycles there and I thought, what the hell is going on? They did a little challenge on me thing. One of the guys came in a guy by the name of evil and said, Billy, let me see your colors. And it was like, you know, he said, no, take them off. Let me see them. Well, that was a little fishy, but one of the things that you don't do is full patch tells you to do something. You do it. Right. And I held them out and he reached out and snapped my colors from me. And then he said, I got your colors. He started hollering at me. You let me take your colors. I got your fucking colors. He threw them back at me, bam. And turned around and walked off and I thought, what in the hell was that about? Then Rocky comes in, Billy, you let evil snatch your colors from you. I said, he set me up, Rocky. He set me up. It's not. And he just shook his head and said, God, Jesus, Billy, then another mongrel comes in. And he just, he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says, they want to talk to you outside, Billy. He was like, Oh, shit, they want to talk to you out back. That's no good, buddy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they're all the mongrels are out back and one of the mongrels came up to me and said, get in the circle and face your president. The mongrel started reading me to write that. He said, you know what? You die for those colors. You don't ever let anybody touch them. Little won't take them from you. You know that, Billy, and he starts screaming at me and I told him, Hey, look, evil set me up. He set me up. And then evil pipes up. You better watch what you say in prospect, you know, so I pipe down and he said, nobody gets in here to see, get their full patch without losing that M center patch anyway. And I said, Domingo, I've been the best damn prospect you guys have ever had. I did everything that I was told he set me up, Domingo. Domingo said, well, if you don't want to lose that center patch, Billy, and he reached inside of his jacket, he pulls out a full patch mongrel rocker and said, put this on. And everybody went, yeah, yeah, I was doing, yeah, yeah, I'm a full patch freaking mongrel. And they're pouring beer all over me and I reached up to wipe the beer out of my face and it didn't feel like beer felt like molasses and I looked and there's one guy there with a 50-weight can of motor oil and he's dumping it all over me. But you know what, I didn't care, I made it. I was a full patch mongrel. I made it. And of course, they knew you can sow the damn patch on right then. So Domingo had a full patch t-shirt and he said, here, Billy, put this on, you know, so I put on the full patch t-shirt. I was a full patch freaking mongrel. And I walked out front because I knew John Saconi was up the street and I walked out front and walked on the sidewalk out front so he could see that his undercover agent was wearing a full patch freaking mongrels. Did he see it? He saw me, he saw me. And my worries from them finding out who I was because this idiot private investigator who later on sued me, I wasn't worried about that anymore. I was worried about what they were going to ask me to do as a full past mongrel. The murder bugged me more than anything because I knew that's a case ending thing. I'm not going to get involved in murder, obviously, and getting caught in the middle of a murder because we were challenging the Hills Angels all the time. We were getting into it with the Hills Angels. I mean, murder could have happened at any moment and I knew, hey, look, if I get out of here and live, it ain't going to be because the cops came in here and rescued me. Hell, I'm just another mongrel. It's going to be called my mongrel brothers got me out of here alive. And speaking of that, speaking of that, I know in 1999, your mom passed away, right? Yeah. And that's, you know, regardless of where you are in life, that's your mother, you know, it upsets us all. And how did your colleagues respond to that and how did the mongrels respond to that? Well, when that happened, I was running 24/7. I was running 24/7. I went to the mongrels and I said, hey, guys, time off I'm going home and my momma died. And I went to ATF and said, time out I'm going home, my mother's passed away. And I got on a plane, flew back to North Carolina, and buried my mother, very emotional, got on a plane, flew back to Los Angeles, ATF didn't want anything except for me back on that motorcycle and back undercover, ATF, nobody, to include John Cicone said, sorry about your mommability, none of them. Get back on that bike and get in. I rode over to Evil's house, got off my bike, walked up to his front door, but Evil came to the door. I reached out to give him the mongrel handshake and he grabbed me and he put me in a bear hug and he said, Billy, I love you brother. He said, I'm sorry about your mama and I could feel something, chills go up my back and he held me for several seconds to let me go and turn them walked into the house and something came over me, hard to explain. I sat down on the couch, I heard the next motorcycle, it rolled up, big old young guy by the name of JR. He comes up to the door, comes in, I got up to give him the mongrel handshake and he put me in a bear hug and he held me and he patted me on the back and he said, I love you brother. He said, I'm sorry about your mama and I could feel it. I almost got numb and the next mongrel that came in did the same thing, rancid, namingo, all of them hugging me, all of them telling me how much they love me and how sorry they were about my mama and I'm going to tell you, I didn't know what to do, Steve. At that time, I wanted to ride off with the mongrels, I wanted to be a mongrel. They loved me, they showed that to me and I got on that motorcycle and I was just going through my head and going through my head and this was at the New Year's party, one of the biggest events that the mongrels have. When I got over there, one mongrel after another, after another, after another, put their arms around me, told me they loved me, patted me on the back and held me and I felt that love, Steve and it hurt me, ATF didn't say a word and my mongrels put their arms around me and told me they loved me and I felt it and I didn't know what I was going to do, Steve. I didn't know what I was going to ride off those mongrels and be Billy St. John for the rest of my life. I started drinking and I drank myself into a stupor and I went back to the room and I laid down because I was going to pass out and I did but about four o'clock in the morning mongrels crashed into the room and they were waking me up and they were shaking me, "Get up Billy, get up Billy, can you take a shake down, can you take a shake down?" The mongrels had grabbed a couple of women and they raped them. One of them had gotten away and had called the police and now the whole place was surrounded. I was ready for a shake down, I just wasn't ready for everything else to follow. They had grabbed a couple of women and they had raped them and that was like a wet squirrel getting hit in the face. I knew I couldn't ride off with the mongrels. I knew I couldn't rape women. I was going to kill for the club and I was back to Billy Queen and that was an eye opener buddy. My education rolled over to two years and after two years they had killed the people. They had raped women, they had assaulted people all over everywhere. I knew my number was coming up. I knew that I was going to be in the middle of a rape situation or a murder and I was feeling it and when you start feeling that, Steve, you're going to change and you better be able to play the part every day but when you start to become emotional because of fear or whatever, thinking that your number is coming up, you're going to change and they're going to see it and so I went to John Secony and I told him after two years that's it. I can't do it anymore but we had to maintain the operation until we got all the information necessary for the indictments, all the information that we needed for the search warrants and that would take two more months. So for two months, there was no way that I wanted to get back on that bike and go back in but I did time after time after time because you know in a grand jury situation, they pulled people from the streets and they're sitting in there listening to a story determining whether there's enough for a grand jury indictment. Well I didn't know who they were talking to and every day that I walked in, I thought they'd talk to somebody that might know a mongol somewhere. Yeah, get the hell out while you're still alive. So I go to that out for there's two more months and at the end, it was one day I was a mongol, the next day I was kind of in the ATF agent watching all these mongols getting arrested around the country. It was like being in the Twilight Zone. Well, we're here at the end and I've wasted enough of your time today but I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. Is there any last little takeaway here before we come to the end? Anything that you'd like to tell everybody, like we said at the beginning, this affected your entire life and that's what I mean when I say being a dedicated law enforcement professional is a lifestyle, not just a nine to five, hey, I'm going to work today. So what would your words of wisdom be for us here at the end after everything you've been through? I mean, you've been through stuff that most cops can't even dream of, including me. Just don't give up your life for it. And I know sometimes the best you can do is not good enough and you please remember that. Sometimes the best you can do is not good enough and we see it on TV almost every day. The cop being killed here, undercover agents going down, going bad, it's got to be done. You got to do it, go out there and enthusiastically do it. Don't lose your life doing it. Don't lose your life. Don't lose your family. None of these scuts buckets are worth our lives. So Billy's got two books out. One is under and alone by William Queen and it's the true story of the undercover agent who infiltrated America's most violent outlaw motorcycle gang and you've got a second book out is it armed and dangerous? Armed and dangerous. So you can find those. Go ahead. Well, chasing another idiot out there in Southern California ended up getting into a shootout with armed and dangerous. Yeah. And I just checked before we started the interview, you can find these on Amazon. So get a copy, especially on the earth alone. I tell you when I read that, it was one of those, again, one of those books that I, when you start, you can't put it down. You just get caught up into it and you have a website, right? Well, I have a website, uh, no, I don't even want to put that out. Listen, let me, let me say this, Steve, God bless our, our people in blue. And that, that includes everybody, our people in blue. God bless our military and God bless the United States of America. Steve. I'm with you. Thanks for having me on, buddy. It's been an honor. So Billy, if you'll hang on just for a second and for all our listeners, stand by for the day. So what do you think? Is Billy Queen a little crazy for his undercover work against some of the most dangerous and evil criminals in the United States? Or is Billy Queen a lot crazy for his work? How many of us have the courage, the dedication, the commitment, the perseverance, the fearlessness, even the guts to do what he did to protect our community and our country? I mean, let's be honest, I couldn't have done what Billy did and I think most people feel the same way. But thank God for Billy Queen and people like Billy, people who are willing to risk their own lives for the good of mankind. I mean, think about this for a minute. How does someone who didn't grow up in that underworld, criminal lifestyle, who came from a law enforcement family who served our country and the military and is a combat veteran, how do they step into a completely different lifestyle? One that is 180 degrees opposite of what they know and continually subject themselves to the potential of being brutalized, beaten, or even murdered, and they do that for more than two years. If you heard what Billy said, he was on call for these criminals 24 hours a day, seven days a week. How does anyone do that? And that was just one of his undercover adventures. I tell you what, it just blows my mind. You know, I love a saying attributed to the actor, John Wayne, you got to love John Wayne, right? His saying is courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway. Now, that's our man, Billy Queen. He saddled up for years to take on some of the most violent criminal organizations in our country, people who represent pure evil. What a true American, an absolute hero, a real patriot. God bless Billy Queen, along with all the men and women in law enforcement, our military and all of our first responders, please keep them safe. Billy has two books out under and alone. You can see here, and I've got next to me, which is, that's the one I read and his other book is armed and dangerous, which I plan to read. I'm telling you, once I got it in the under and alone, I didn't want to put it down. You can find his books on Amazon and almost anywhere else where you get your books, or you can go to thegameacrimespodcast.com, our website, click on the book list at the top of the page and you'll find a listing and a link for Billy's books there. Billy, one last thank you, brother, for being on Game Crimes. You set the standard bar high for the rest of us, and you made us all proud. There are so many lessons to be learned from what you did, you know, there's a quote that I love that you can tell them into quotes. It's credited to a guy named Edwin Burke, and this, in my opinion, sums up Billy Queen. The quote says, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing." You know what, Billy was not and is not one of those who stood by and watched evil thrive. He chose to do something, makes me so damn proud of it. He fought it at every opportunity without fear and without concern for his personal safety. Billy, job well done, my friends. Okay, very quickly, I'd appreciate you going to Apple or Spotify and hit those five stars each week. It only takes a minute, and this is a very small act that really helps support the show. And on YouTube, this is new. Please do me a favor and click on that subscribe button. 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