Original subtitles

[ Engines rumbling ]

-The Hells Angels, for a whole generation,

have been known as a black-jacketed motorcycle gang

with a taste for violence.

-People do not testify against the Hells Angels,

and people do not interfere with them.

-That was the way it was.

♪♪

♪♪

-A one percenter is someone who has dedicated

their entire existence to living on the fringe,

adhering by no one's rules except for their own.

-The code is "all on one."

You know, Hells Angels always ride.

-You think of them as the worst of the worst,

but I think of them as the elite.

-We all got guts.

We're not afraid to fight for what we believe in.

-Everything is about this.

This patch means everything.

Your life is dedicated

to the point where you will die for it.

-The bikers were very intelligent businessmen.

-It was high-powered weapons. AK-47s.

-They were drug dealers. They were organized crime.

-Cocaine is a gold mine.

-It's an enterprise.

The scope and scale of that had never been seen before.

-I'd say they could have given Jeff Bezos a run for his money.

-It's the Wild West out there.

-They were murderers.

-My job is to catch these guys.

-What are they gonna do -- kill us?

-No compunction of slaughtering their enemies.

But to turn against your own?

-The vote was taken,

and that's when all hell was let loose.

-It was really out of control.

The Hells Angels embark on an enterprise worth

upwards of a billion dollars.

-We all felt like we had a target on our backs.

-It was turn or die.

-It's an untenable situation to be in.

-I mean, this is biblical.

♪♪

-♪ Gonna call down thunder ♪

♪ And shake the ground ♪

♪ When they call my number ♪

♪ I'll shut 'em down ♪

♪ You can't stop me, no ♪

♪ You can't stop me now ♪

♪ You can bury me way down under ♪

♪ I'll rise above ♪

♪ I'm gonna call down thunder ♪

♪ Shake the ground ♪

♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪

♪ You can't stop me now ♪

♪♪

♪♪

-In the 1970s, the United States was in

the middle of a major crime wave that didn't discriminate.

It went from one side of our country to the other.

New York City was a mess.

Los Angeles wasn't much better.

Major cities in the Midwest, like Detroit and Chicago,

were experiencing a fleeing of residents to the suburbs.

-One detective, as he left the scene this morning, said,

"We've got good reason to be nervous these days."

-The cocaine and all these various drugs coming in.

I had one picture of a guy who was murdered.

He was lying half out of a car. I guess he was shot.

Some drug deal gone bad.

[ Siren wailing ]

-In the '60s, drugs started exploding,

but in a recreational way.

Marijuana. LSD.

But the 1970s start turning ugly.

It's the beginning of cocaine.

[ Engine revs ]

-Crime took a different direction in the United States

and became bigger, more corporatized.

[ Cash register chimes ]

What happened was the Italian Mafia,

who would never deal drugs when the old guard was in charge,

realized there was too much money to be made,

and so heroin was everywhere, followed by cocaine,

and the profits were huge.

♪♪

-The Hells Angels were really

at the right time at the right place.

They were a motorcycle gang,

they were always into selling drugs,

they were into their power,

but they weren't a serious organized-crime group.

Suddenly they realized that what they were doing

as a pastime, selling drugs,

could now become their livelihood.

-It's a court order restraining us

from breaking the law.

So I guess we can't break it while we're here.

-First, you had Sonny Barger,

who was by far the most influential

and consequential Hells Angel of his day.

-This man probably knows more

about the Hells Angels than anyone.

He is Sonny Barger,

who helped organize the group 21 years ago

and is considered by many

to be the most powerful man in the Hells Angels.

-Sonny had big vision, big ambitions.

-In order for them to exist and flourish over time,

you needed some way

to control membership and their image.

-I think we all got guts.

We're not afraid to fight for what we believe in.

-And he realized that, "Yes, we could be rowdy bikers,

but we need discipline.

We need an army."

He sets up rules, geographic limits,

so each chapter had either a city or often part of a city.

You couldn't raid

and step on the toes of your fellow brothers.

-He added a level of sophistication

to the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club.

He brought structure to it.

-You also had a situation

where there was the counterculture,

there was politics, there was war.

[ Indistinct shouting ]

There was a lot of unrest.

-Why don't you people go home?!

-Sonny Barger was confident, and he could --

He could speak. He was articulate.

-Dear Mr. President, on behalf of myself and my associates,

I volunteer a group of loyal Americans

for behind-the-line duty in Vietnam.

-And then you combine that

with this push by Sonny Barger

to start building the mythology.

-We're a little different. We ride motorcycles.

And when the police say, "These guys are killers,

these guys are dope fiends," this and that,

it's probably not too hard for the public to believe.

But we're mostly a bunch of happy-go-lucky guys

trying to make it in this world, you know?

-Undoubtedly, Sonny Barger was a marketing genius.

He was able to capture public opinion and narrative

about the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club

while containing the bad behavior.

♪♪

-So, suddenly, the Hells Angels, who were always dangerous,

always involved in guns and drugs and other activities,

it starts turning a lot darker.

Drugs means money. Money means turf wars.

Turf wars means bombs, killings.

And it just sets the stage for what will be

four, five decades of violence.

Sonny Barger will openly say,

"In the '60s, it was all fun and games.

In the 1970s, we turned into gangsters."

-The police authorities say they have become far more than that.

They've gone into such moneymaking fields

as narcotics and prostitution and have made millions

using methods even more brutal than the mafias.

-They have their criminal enterprise flourish unimpeded

because of the fear

that attaches to the name Hells Angels.

♪♪

-Sonny Barger has this vision of expanding

what was a California group around the world.

He starts by spreading across the United States,

moving into the Northeast.

-The Hells Angels is divided -- West Coast, East Coast.

So, what happened on the East Coast

was generally Sandy Alexander's business.

He was the Sonny Barger, if you will,

of the East Coast

and therefore had his say in that territory.

-Sandy Alexander and the Hells Angels

leveraged the media, like the Geraldo show,

to put stakes in the ground

about who they were and what they were about.

-What makes the Hells Angels

different from other people who --

-A brotherhood of men.

It takes a man to be a Hells Angel.

-They're busting our balls, you know,

and they'll do anything to bust our balls.

You know the man.

-Sandy was good. I liked Sandy.

I thought he was a good leader running the Hells Angels.

I wouldn't want the job.

The Hells Angels were my neighbors.

I found this apartment on Third Street,

got a little studio set up there.

And across the street was the Hells Angels clubhouse.

Usually there would be this huge fellow

with tattoos all over his body

and various chains and things and a pit bull with him.

And that was Big Vinnie.

Huge, big slab of meat.

He was on TV with Sandy.

-How much do you weigh, Vin? -320.

-What do you have back here?

-Oh, my knife. -Uh, what do you use it for?

-Uh, peeling bananas and oranges and stuff like that.

-And then he asked me to take a picture.

I said, "Oh, this is great. I'll get some good shots of him."

It became iconic,

that photograph of him with a pit bull.

But he was a psychotic nut.

About two months later, he comes up

and, without saying anything,

he just cold-cocks me right in the face.

Then I found out he really liked the photograph.

His way of showing me

that he appreciated the photograph

was to come and cold-cock me.

This is before he really did any of the really crazy stuff

that later he was attributed to doing --

throwing a girl off a building.

I can see him doing that now.

Just trying to do the craziest, stupidest thing that he could.

Having no empathy.

♪♪

-The Hells Angels were violent.

They were known for being violent.

They reveled in their violence.

But they weren't the only ones.

♪♪

When you're talking about the world of outlaw bikers,

there are really two groups that stand above everybody else.

The Hells Angels are clearly the name on the marquee --

the most notorious, infamous biker club in world history.

But a close second is the Outlaws Motorcycle Club,

which is the equivalent of the Hells Angels

in the Midwest and down in Florida.

-Their name says it all. They're proud to be outlaws.

There's no notion of being "angelic."

So the Outlaws had no reluctance to use violence.

-The relationship between the Outlaws

and the Hells Angels in the mid-'70s

was very bad, to say the least.

-There's been a ongoing war

between the Hells Angels and the Outlaws

that trace back a half-century.

My sources, and by reading official court records,

I believe that the war was started by an altercation

on New Year's Eve 1973 in New York.

[ Crowd cheering ]

The Hells Angels are throwing a party at their clubhouse,

and you had three Florida Outlaws

that were in New York at the time,

and these three guys showed up at the party.

-Accounts vary, but one of them

possibly raped the wife/girlfriend

of the president of the Hells Angels in New York,

Sandy Alexander.

-And these three guys got physically attacked

and beaten severely by the Hells Angels.

I believe one of them got their vest stolen,

which is, like, sacrilege in the world of bikers.

After that, the Outlaws were able to identify

the names of the three Hells Angels

that had attacked their Outlaw brothers in New York

on that New Year's Eve,

and they took them to a construction site

with a gravel pit

and killed them all, execution style.

And that ignited the now still-raging biker war

between the Hells Angels and the Outlaws.

And the actions the Hells Angels took next

would spread mayhem across the entire continent,

bring on the rise of a new Hells Angels king,

and leave hundreds dead.

-So we have three Hells Angels that had been murdered,

brutally executed by the Outlaws.

Now the Hells Angels and the Outlaws just hate each other.

Those two altercations sparked a biker war,

a bitter, violent conflict that has yet to cease

or slow down 50 years later.

♪♪

-The Outlaws had already made a move to come to Canada

in the mid-'60s, late '60s.

-The leadership of the Outlaws

saw that they could go into Canada

and pick and choose what biker clubs

they wanted to develop support arrangements with...

in a lot of cases, they wanted to patch over.

So they saw it as a ground for recruiting and for expansion.

And the Outlaws already had a strong bond

with a group called the Satan's Choice.

-The Satan's Choice were huge. They were organized.

They were prolific manufacturers of PCP and methamphetamine.

They had massive sway.

They had massive presence, power.

And they were respected and feared.

They were true one percenters.

In Windsor, Ontario,

there was a cross-border alliance or friendship

with Satan's Choice and the Outlaws in Detroit.

-From Downtown Detroit, you can get to Windsor

in less than five minutes

under a tunnel or going over a bridge,

and they saw this as fertile territory for growth.

-The Outlaws were the exclusive recipients

of the Satan's Choice methamphetamine.

In exchange, money, guns

coming up across the border for the Satan's Choice.

-Due to this affiliation, the Outlaws chapter

in Detroit, Michigan, becomes

incredibly powerful and important,

and the chapter president in Detroit

is a vicious biker leader named Harry "Taco" Bowman.

Taco has an incredibly powerful position

in the Outlaw's base in Detroit,

and that power is only gonna grow.

-The Hells Angels know

that they need to control all of North America,

both because there are big cities

where you've got a profit base to sell your drugs,

but also because drugs can easily flow

across the northern border.

The fact that the Outlaws have moved north of the border,

have taken over Satan's Choice, suddenly there's a big dilemma

because now all that money, all that drugs

north of the border is up for grabs.

-Hells Angels had to stop the Outlaws

in one way or the other.

They had to have a presence to fight them,

to not allow them to seize control

from under them.

-And the Hells Angels had their eyes set

on a group of bikers

that they had originally met at a biker rally

in Laconia, New Hampshire.

[ Engines rumbling ]

-Laconia is the oldest,

longest-running motorcycle race event.

It's in New Hampshire.

It's an annual gathering of people

who wanted to watch the races with like-minded people.

It's like the annual pilgrimage,

the hotbed for inter-club mingling.

It was at Laconia that the Quebec clubs

and the New England clubs really started

to meet each other. for the first time.

People would party with each other,

make friends, make alliances, make deals,

get in fights, sometimes kill each other.

[ Indistinct shouting ]

[ Siren wailing ]

We have these crazy French Canadians wreaking havoc

hand in hand with their American counterparts.

The border didn't matter anymore.

Now it was just like,

"We're all, you know, motorcycle brothers."

That's a really important moment for the Hells Angels.

They needed guys to be able to fight the Outlaws,

and they saw the Popeye Motorcycle Club

as the number-one choice.

And don't let the name fool you.

The Popeyes were a hardcore and serious motorcycle club.

♪♪

♪♪

[ Indistinct conversations ]

-If you want to become Hells Angel,

you need to communicate.

Me, I don't speak good English, but I try.

[ Laughs ]

I came to Montreal with, uh, five guys that I know,

and we bought bikes.

And in 1965, '66, we decide to go to Laconia.

And we had a patch made -- just a small patch --

because we want to look like a motorcycle club.

It said "Popeye le Cruiser."

One member, one of the brothers,

he asked me, he said, "Why do you use that name?

It's a funny name. Why using Popeye?

It's a comic."

"I'm gonna tell you something.

You look at Popeye on TV...

he's always in trouble.

He fight all the time.

Don't forget -- He win all the time."

[ Popeye grunts ]

[ Laughs ]

"Okay. Now I understand." [ Laughs ]

-They were violent.

They weren't afraid to get into fights with the police,

to attempt to kill or wipe out their enemies,

whether it was Satan's Choice or the Outlaws.

-At their peak, they were well over 200 members

across six chapters,

and there was a well-established drug network

that had been set up by the Popeyes and their allies.

So they were a big deal.

They were respected, eventually feared.

-And this was something that attracted the Hells Angels

to wanting to patch them over.

They viewed them as the perfect counterbalance

to the alliance that was forged

between the Satan's Choice and the Outlaws.

If the Hells Angels were going to compete

with Taco Bowman and the Outlaws,

they were gonna need a very strong leader up north.

One of the Popeyes' presidents, Yves Buteau,

who went by the nickname "The Boss,"

fit the job description perfectly.

-He's, I think, one of the best and one of the smarter bikers

that they had at that time.

A cerebral guy.

-Buteau never had a beard, and he had blond hair.

-He was a true biker in every sense of the word.

-He was a well-known brother in the States

by mostly the East Coast members.

-Buteau wanted to make money, and he knew

that the best way to do so would be selling drugs.

♪♪

-Everyone around him, by all accounts,

gravitated towards him because he was level-headed.

He was intelligent.

-Lots of people, including Sonny Barger,

were very impressed by Buteau.

-And he was smart enough to know

you're gonna make better partners in the future

if you don't resort to threats immediately.

-He had an idea.

He wanted to corporatize the biker gang

to make money from it.

He instructed his bikers not to wear their colors

unless it was a ceremony,

to look like regular members of society

when they weren't holding an event.

It was a whole new type of biker that followed Yves Buteau.

-He could see far away, you know?

The future. He could see.

Yeah. Yeah. Me too.

[ Laughter ]

-The Outlaws had already planted their flag up north,

and Yves Buteau realized

that in order for the Popeyes to exist,

they had to cease to exist.

They'd have to patch over to become Hells Angels.

-Generally, when it comes to patching over a new chapter,

they needed a unanimous vote

of all the important Hells Angels.

Sonny, the people in New York, they all had to say yes.

-On the 5th of December 1977, we went to New York City.

I had a hard time to cross the border.

I had to do a few tricks.

[ Laughs ]

But we were all there.

And all the members,

they represent all the chapters in the U.S.

They were in New York, and they took a vote for us.

Maybe be around 4:00 in the afternoon, 4:30,

they come out and they say, "You are Hells Angel now."

The first chapter in Canada.

Montreal became the first one.

♪♪

I came back on the 24th of December

at night with a box with the patch.

And everybody, they were waiting for me in a place in Montreal.

So when I came in the place, I was like Santa Claus.

[ Laughs ]

♪♪

We had somebody there to put the patch with the machine.

Everything right on the -- on the spot.

[ Laughs ]

And it starts from there.

-Once they become Hells Angels,

1977, Yves Buteau becomes chapter president.

-And then went on to become the national president

in pretty short order.

-And he imposes some of the same rules

that Sonny Barger does.

He imposes discipline.

The second thing he does is he goes to war.

He goes to war against the Outlaws.

-And it just escalated.

-Within two months, three Outlaws were killed.

-The conflict, the war between the Outlaws and the Hells Angels

naturally follows wherever they go,

anywhere in the world.

So once they set up shop,

both clubs were immediately at war.

♪♪

-The Popeyes now becomes part of a global struggle,

like Russia and the United States,

where they move into a country

and each of them support a faction.

So now you have the Outlaws and you have the Hells Angels,

both of them fighting for control north of the border.

And that battle will go on for decades.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

-When it came to traditional organized crime,

they would commit a murder not at a distance.

They would go up to the person, eliminate him,

put three, four bullets in him, and nobody else will get hurt.

The bikers, however, started using bombs, remote bombs,

and this is where it became very dangerous,

because you're putting the rest of the population,

innocent people, in danger.

[ Siren wailing ]

-A lot more is at stake. There's money. There's guns.

You've got an army behind you.

♪♪

-Meanwhile, you had this young,

up-and-coming biker in a steel town in Ontario,

right outside of Toronto,

and he would go on to become a major recruit

for the Hells Angels

and change the trajectory of the club forever.

A guy by the name of Walter Stadnick.

-I'm probably gonna get into trouble for this,

but Walter Stadnick, I think, is my favorite Hells Angel.

You could see this guy is really smart, right?

A businessman and a planner.

Walter Stadnick grows up in Hamilton.

-It's sort of a dying Rust Belt town.

It was a steel town, and the industry

attracted all kinds of immigration,

including one Sicilian town that just packed up

and all of them moved to Hamilton.

And that's how the Mafia started there.

And ever since, it's been

sort of a center of organized crime.

-Stadnick got into the crime game early.

He was moving hash and marijuana

all the way back in high school.

-And that's how he got his nickname.

"Nurget" is slang for nugget, like a nugget of hash.

And because he was physically small,

he was also known as that.

-I think he's like 5'4", 160 pounds if he was wet

in his biker getup.

-He was very much enamored with the biker life.

-From a very early age, Walter Stadnick

had his eyes on becoming a big-time player

in the biker underworld.

He was going across Canada

trying to find the right fit for him in the biker landscape.

-In his early 20s, he had just graduated high school.

He tries to get into the Satan's Choice,

which are the dominant club in Canada at the time,

and he was denied because he was too small.

-Walter didn't stand a chance with people

like the Satan's Choice because he was 5'4".

That was a huge barrier to most clubs.

-Once he was denied entry into the Satan's Choice,

he was like, "Well, now I'm gonna go for the Hells Angels."

I guess he had a lot of heart and he really wanted it badly.

-Because of the repeated rejections

and, really, the humiliation Walter suffered,

he didn't just have a chip on his shoulder.

He had a whole lumberyard.

-It's just how somebody gets in that way of life.

You've got to have a need

to have a group of supporters around you.

Ironically, I think it's they're afraid of facing life alone.

-In 1977, Walter Stadnick is riding with the Wild Ones.

-The Wild Ones were just regular street toughs.

They were like a street gang but on motorcycles.

Leadership of the Mafia in Hamilton

didn't want to deal with bikers,

but a lot of the lieutenants would, sort of on the sly.

And the Wild Ones,

their sort of signature was bombing.

A lot of Italian-owned businesses would be bombed

if they didn't pay protection money or use certain suppliers.

-But Walter's aspiring to bigger things.

He didn't see a big enough future with the Wild Ones.

He wants to patch over his club to the Hells Angels.

-In 1978, he takes off to Montreal

with a goal to endear himself to the Hells Angels.

-And he gets an early taste of what it's gonna be

because he gets caught up in an attempted massacre.

-They came to the clubhouse early in the morning.

They came at 10:00, 11:00 in the morning.

-Their clubhouse is only a stone's throw away

from the Bar Salon Tourbillon.

It's basically a strip club.

-So they keep asking all day.

"I would like to go to the bar. We'd like to go to the bar."

Finally, we went.

-Stadnick, the Wild Ones members, and the Hells Angels

show up to Le Tourbillon.

They're all gathered around a big round table,

having some drinks,

just enjoying themselves, having a good time.

-And there was two guy

sitting near the wall close to the stage

where the girl was dancing.

Normally, all the guys go to the bar, the dancers.

They're all like that. [ Panting ]

But one guy sit -- his back...

He didn't look at the girl.

He look at the door.

-They were dressed in a little more clean-cut way,

what you wouldn't expect from the usual clientele.

-So I told that to my brother

in front of me.

I said, "Hey, check these two guys."

-They got up, hadn't even touched their beers,

walked over to the table,

picked up their guns, opened fire.

-Bang, bang, bang everywhere.

Killed the guy that's sitting in front of me.

And one was saying, "Hey, come on. Let's go, let's go."

And the other guy, I heard he put a new clip in his gun,

and he came back.

So me, I took a table --

I was on my knee with the table, and he was shooting on me.

But he never touched me.

♪♪

-Two of the Hells Angels members,

they were hit in the head right away, died instantly.

-And Walter was smart enough to slide under the table,

and he was not hit,

but three other bikers were dead.

-And remarkably, Walter Stadnick will live.

And despite all the bloodshed that will continue,

Walter Stadnick is one of the few Hells Angels

who is alive to this day.

-It was a mass shooting. Three dead. Three wounded.

And they never caught the guys that did it.

But it's widely accepted the shooters were

two Outlaws from Detroit and Miami.

-The fact that Stadnick was there...

survived...

certainly, you know, put him up a notch

in the Hells Angels' eyes.

So then he started to prospect for them.

He kind of gets his foot in the door at that critical stage

where Buteau is still around.

The Hells Angels are traveling everywhere.

They're on a conquest to get

as many alliances fortified as they can.

-You got to remember in the late '70s, early '80s,

this was when that recruiting war

between the Hells Angels and the Outlaws was at its peak.

Bodies were dropping daily.

And this mayhem is about to hit a Hells Angels king

where he lives.

-Yves Buteau realizes the need to absolutely crush his enemies.

There is testimony that he is involved in the assassination,

the bombing death, of an Outlaws rival.

But he'll pay for that.

-At this point,

things were being blown up on a regular basis.

And just like now, you didn't really know

who your friend was and who your enemy was.

-McDonald's doesn't mind competition.

I mean, they may not like it,

but they're not gonna try to blow up Wendy's.

The Hells Angels are not that kind.

They want to be the only joint in town.

-By 1983, Yves Buteau had been waging a brutal war

against the Outlaws for five years.

-Dozens of bikers have been shot,

dozens more killed, and Yves Buteau

and the Hells Angels are quickly becoming

the most dominant club.

So Taco Bowman and the Outlaws knew

in order for them to succeed in Canada,

they needed to get rid of Yves Buteau.

But you got to remember,

just as ruthless as Yves Buteau is

is as smart as he is.

He knows it's better to make friends than enemies.

So in September 1983,

he decides to extend an olive branch

to the remaining Satan's Choice bikers

and give them an opportunity to become Hells Angels.

[ Engine revving ]

He meets one of them at a bar to negotiate,

but he soon realizes that his enemies are a lot closer

than he originally thought.

♪♪

-He was in the bar with a Satan's Choice and his wife,

and there was two guys in the other side of the bar,

and his kid brother.

-Did the Outlaws know that this negotiation

with the Satan's Choice was going down?

Did they know that Buteau was gonna be present?

Still, nobody knows for sure.

-The kid went outside, so Boss went outside to talk to him.

-As the story goes,

this guy was desperate to become a member of the Outlaws.

In order to become a full-patch member,

he would have to do some dirty work.

And that dirty work meant murder.

-And he pulled a gun, and he shoot Yves Buteau.

♪♪

-Once Buteau was killed, they lost their bearing in a way.

It put them into disarray a bit.

All the expansion that he'd been working so hard on --

kind of cooled that.

-It took time for the club to come back on their feet.

Buteau and me were really close, so it hurt me bad.

When he died, it was hard for me, you know?

And for everybody.

-And at his funeral -- It's one of the first big biker funerals.

Two thousand people show up to pay tribute.

He's become a hero to hundreds of bikers around the world,

and it'll really set the stage for other big biker funerals

but also other big and even scarier, smarter leaders

north of the border.

[ Shutter clicking, siren wailing ]

-It would take a few years

for a new leader to emerge at the forefront

of the Hells Angels in Canada.

But at this time, Walter Stadnick is finding

an incredible amount of traction

as he climbs the ladder of power within the Hells Angels.

-He became very tactful.

He was known for seducing other gangs

rather than taking them over by force,

and they reacted to his diplomacy

rather than his toughness.

-He's smart, and people can see it.

His fellow bikers respect him and fear him,

and he might even have a pathway to the top.

But the hand of God deals him a nearly fatal blow.

-Walter was actually on his way to a memorial for Buteau

about a year after he died.

And it happened to be the same day

that the pope was coming to Canada for the first time.

-You can't make this stuff up.

It's September 1984.

The head of the Catholic Church is coming to Montreal.

There's a priest, among many who are making their pilgrimage,

driving into Montreal.

Meanwhile, Walter Stadnick, a Hells Angel,

wants to pay tribute to his leader, Yves Buteau.

-We leave from the clubhouse, and we were riding fast.

♪♪

I was the second bike on the right side,

and Nurget was just after me.

The road was like a T,

so I could see a car coming on the right side.

He saw, so he put the brake, but he just blocked the road.

I couldn't pass, so I put my bike on the side...

and my bike jammed under the car.

[ Tires screeching, glass breaking ]

And the gas was leaking on the road.

And me, I'd fallen in the ditch the other side.

But Nurget, he was after me.

So he put his bike on the side,

but his bike jammed in my bike -- and him too.

His bike slide on the road and make sparks and light the fire.

A big, big, big mushroom fire...

[ Explosion echoes ]

...50 feet in the air.

♪♪

And he was in that fire.

[ Flames crackling ]

The driver of the car was a priest.

♪♪

When you're riding a motorcycle and you get in a crash,

it'll almost always be 1-0 for the car,

not you on the motorcycle.

Remarkably, Walter Stadnick survives,

but he's badly scarred.

-All the other brothers, they took Nurget from the fire,

and at the same time, a pickup truck arrived on the site.

♪♪

So we leave to go to the hospital,

and I'll never forget -- His hat was melting in his face.

♪♪

He was screaming like crazy all the way.

♪♪

Maybe a month later, I went with two other members

to see Nurget at the hospital in Hamilton.

♪♪

All this nose was gone.

You could see the bone.

He was in a bad, bad shape. Bad, bad shape.

I couldn't recognize him.

♪♪

♪♪

-Stadnick was badly injured for the rest of his life.

Severe damage.

He lost some fingers,

and he was burned so badly that his face changed.

-Nurget was so badly injured in this accident,

a lot of people were predicting the end of Walter Stadnick.

Ultimately, though, it only proved to be a speed bump

on his path to the throne.

♪♪

Walter Stadnick becomes the most shadowy...

organized-crime figure.

He is like the boogeyman combined with Don Corleone

combined with Clay from "Sons of Anarchy,"

all kind of rolled into one.

And Stadnick is this kind of Wizard of Oz puppeteer

that is heard from a lot but not seen a lot.

During that stretch of time,

when Walter's Stadnick is behind the scenes,

it leaves what appears to be a power vacuum,

at least publicly.

This leaves an opening

for another Hells Angel to emerge as a powerhouse --

A guy by the name of Maurice Boucher,

who people called "Mom."

♪♪

-Mom Bouchet was a tough guy.

And he was described as a psycho very early in his life

because of the amount of violence

he always had around him.

He was in and out of jail most of his life.

-He used a lot of drugs,

but he realized that this was business.

There was a lot of money to be made.

And he got clean

and decided to make a real play for the business in Quebec.

-Maurice "Mom" Bouchet was a crime lord.

And I think his leadership style,

his approach to the biker underworld

was really ahead of its time.

I don't think he was somebody that really cared much

about riding motorcycles.

Mom Bouchet wanted to be a boss, a crime lord,

and he saw the Hells Angels as his best way to achieve that.

♪♪

-You had Walter Stadnick,

who had the cold, calculating business sense of Sonny Barger.

Walter Stadnick will expand the Hells Angels

north of the border.

But you needed a cold-blooded general.

♪♪

Maurice "Mom" Boucher had that willingness

to absolutely eliminate his enemies

and eventually do something

that Sonny Barger would never do --

take on the state, take on judges, politicians,

prison guards.

So you needed that combination.

You needed Walter and Maurice.

That's what made the Hells Angels so powerful

north of the border.

-To this day, there are people that can debate for hours

about who was really the number one

and who was really the number two.

Was Mom Bouchet over Walter Stadnick,

or was Walter Stadnick over Mom Bouchet?

But there's no doubt when these two guys met up

and put their heads together that it was going to be magic

for the Hells Angels going forward.

♪♪

-Yves Trudeau was notorious for being the best killer

for the Hells Angels.

-The Hells Angels embark on an enterprise.

It involves the bikers, the Mexican cartel, and the Mafia.

It will end up being worth upwards of $1 billion.

-They've expanded.

This is the McDonald's of organized crime.

Walter Stadnick, he was the brains behind it.

Mom was the brawn.

-Mom Bouchet, power got to his head, and he just lost it.

-Suddenly they could kill anybody anywhere.

-His cocaine abuse got worse, and he just became more unhinged

and more reckless as the time went on.

He got a... [Engine revs]

...from a hooker he picked up who didn't have any teeth.

-Since 2009, there's been over 100 murders in this world.

And I'm not gonna come and tell you again.

The next time, I break your head.

They have no idea they have the Jeffrey Dahmer

of the Hells Angels.

-The hit involved separating this man's head from his torso.

-That's essentially decapitation.

This shit's real.