#304 Chris Bayless - 30 Years Undercover Inside America's Most Violent Gangs

Summary

The Shawn Ryan Show – Episode #304

Guest: Chris Bayless – "30 Years Undercover Inside America’s Most Violent Gangs"
Host: Shawn Ryan
Date: May 14, 2026

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Episode Overview

This dense, hard-hitting episode delves into the extraordinary life and career of Chris Bayless, a former ATF undercover operative who infiltrated some of America's most violent criminal organizations—biker gangs (including the Hell’s Angels), cartels, and street gangs—over a 30-year career. Bayless unpacks stories of close calls, undercover tradecraft, the mental/emotional toll, the evolving threats facing law enforcement, and his own journey through faith and redemption. The conversation is gritty, candid, and at times unexpectedly moving, offering rare insight into both the operational and human dimensions of deep-cover law enforcement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Life & Origins

[16:28 - 24:07]

• Bayless grew up in blue-collar Palos Heights, outside Chicago. He describes a tight-knit, working-class neighborhood where families supported each other through hardship.
• He initially pursued environmental studies but was drawn toward law enforcement after a brush with undercover work and hearing stories from mentors in policing.

2. Joining and Understanding the ATF

[24:07 - 30:29]

• Bayless was inspired by colleagues who described ATF as the "Marine Corps of Federal law enforcement": resourceful, underfunded, close-knit, and always facing dangerous adversaries.
• Outlines ATF’s dual regulatory/enforcement mission and why public confusion exists about its role (not just gun regulation, but violent crime, explosives, etc.).

"From the minute I started, it was always about violent crime."
— Chris Bayless [28:03]

3. Undercover Tradecraft – Early Days and Evolution

[32:23 - 43:57]

• In the late ‘80s, the ATF’s approach was, in Bayless’s words: “Here’s your gun and badge, go catch somebody.”
• He learned the ropes from undercover legends and cut his teeth doing buys with local police—quickly learning criminal psychology, informant handling, and the art of infiltration.
• The mental toll: hypervigilance, paranoia, and the anxiety of being surveilled in dangerous environments.

"Undercover is like sales. At the end of the day, you're a salesman."
— Chris Bayless [44:20]

4. Embedding with Criminal Organizations

[41:00 - 88:49]

• Bayless details cold calls, using informant networks, and the critical importance of being "vouched for" by credible insiders.
• Discussed embedding with the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, then transitioning into the Hell's Henchmen and, ultimately, the Hell’s Angels in the Midwest.
• Stresses the necessity of cultural immersion and tradecraft: understanding gang rituals, behavioral protocols, and performing "street theater" to build credibility.

"Never play a badass, never play a tough guy. Just play the chooch."
— Advice from John Mazzola to Bayless [75:49]

5. Psychological Toll and Family Life

[50:39 - 65:53]

• Balancing undercover life with fatherhood: Bayless candidly discusses the stress, secrecy, and extraordinary OpSec maintained to protect his family.
• Training his children in situational awareness, and recounts a tense moment when his undercover worlds nearly intersected with family life at a public arcade.

"If you want to know what's going on, go out and meet these guys face to face."
— Chris Bayless [22:09]

6. Technological Changes & Threats to Undercover Work

[9:45 - 15:14, 59:01-61:06]

• The rise of AI and facial recognition as existential threats to undercover operations. Modern criminal groups do extensive homework and backstopping is harder.

"If you had any social profile as a kid... you're fucked."
— Chris Bayless [13:34]

7. Handling Close Calls, Betrayal, and Near-Death Experiences

[98:55 - 146:19]

• Brutal accounts of violence, including being targeted for assassination, hand-to-hand fights, and extreme vetting by criminal groups.
• Details a biker war between the Outlaws and Hell’s Angels after a "patch-over" in Rockford, and describes the careful measures for personal security (counter-surveillance, decoys, etc.).
• Admits to feeling lucky and attributes survival to both tradecraft and faith.

"God was watching Chris."
— Chris Bayless [145:08]

8. Major Cases, Stash House Operations, and Violence Reduction

[186:59 - 197:32]

• Outlines ATF-led “Gideon” operations that targeted the most violent crews in cities around the U.S.—Oakland, Phoenix, Chicago—and how strategic stings cut crime rates.
• Chronicles a chilling plot where gang members planned to kill him and "poke holes in [his] body" before dumping him in a river.

9. Facing Allegations of Bias & Entrapment

[193:55 - 198:36]

• Bayless discusses being the public face for ATF against entrapment and racial bias accusations.
• Argues that proactive, targeted enforcement is about removing “crabgrass” (the most violent predators) from all communities, regardless of race.

10. The Cost – PTSD, Burnout, and Leaving the Job

[202:43 - 218:49]

• In his last years, the cumulative effect of constant high-risk engagements, close calls, and hypervigilance leads to profound psychological distress.
• Shares his personal struggle with shame and suicidal ideation, ultimately finding help through therapy, faith, and the support of friends and family.

"When you operate at that hyper vigilance level, at some point your mind goes, ‘Oh, we’re all done now.’"
— Chris Bayless [213:55]

11. Redemption, Faith, and Brotherhood—A New Chapter

[224:19 - end]

• Powerful stories of maintaining friendships with former adversaries, especially Mel Chancey (former Hells Angels leader) and others who found redemption, faith, and a new mission helping others.
• Chris reflects on his path from extreme violence to a quieter, more spiritual life, wrenching on old cars and teaching new generations of agents.
• The show closes with a prayer led by Bayless, dedicated to fellowship, gratitude, and spiritual growth.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On undercover ideology:

"You're always paddling like a motherfucker under the water, but it has to look smooth on top."
— Chris Bayless [44:20]

On the covert mindset:

"What do you do if they decide they want to slit your throat? You need to constantly have plans for everything."
— Chris Bayless [22:32]

On AI’s impact:

"Facial recognition, AI... If you had any social profile as a kid... you're fucked."
— Chris Bayless [13:46]

On violence and solace:

"There is evil and there is evil in these people's eyes, man. You just know, you can just feel it. This guy will kill me in a minute."
— Chris Bayless [193:55]

On redemption and faith:

"Once you come to God and you know in your heart asking forgiveness, God forgives you, it's done, it's forgiven. You do not look back."
— Chris Bayless [160:49]

On why the violence stopped:

"When Mel [Chancey] went to jail, that stopped the violence, man. Because guys were looking at life. And for what?"
— Chris Bayless [198:36]

On leaving ATF:

"The body keeps score. I was just at the end of that point... if anybody gets anything about me talking today, get some help. You owe it to your family, you owe it to yourself."
— Chris Bayless [215:14]

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Important Timestamps (MM:SS)

• 05:10 – Transition from revolvers to Sigs, early shootout story
• 08:09 – Lessons for new law enforcement, redemption theme
• 16:28 – Early life, upbringing near criminal elements
• 32:23 – Into the field, first undercover operations
• 44:20 – Mental toll & tradecraft of being undercover
• 59:01 – Counter-surveillance, how to keep family safe
• 98:55 – Close calls: nearly killed by Outlaws
• 120:00 – Street theater, refusing drugs/alcohol undercover
• 132:03 – Bloodiest moments: witnessing murder aftermath, biker war
• 146:11 – How close he really came to being murdered
• 186:59 – Stash house stings, violent targets, notorious plots
• 202:43 – Burnout, last assignment, deciding to retire
• 215:14 – PTSD, shame, recovery through EMDR and therapy
• 224:19 – Reconciliation and faith, working with ex-criminals, "God’s plan"
• 238:23 – Closing prayer

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Glossary: Gang & Street Terms (as explained)

• Straps / Bangers / Thumpers / Hammers: Guns
• Murk them: To kill
• Bow down: Forced submission under threat (e.g., at gunpoint)
• Old lady: Term for biker’s girlfriend or wife; “property of” can refer to belonging to a member or the club
• Hit a lick: Robbery
• Licks: Robberies

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Closing Tone

The tone throughout is no-nonsense, boots-on-the-ground gritty, but with humanity and humility. Both Shawn and Chris display camaraderie, dry humor, and hard-earned wisdom, closing with a heartfelt prayer and message of hope to those in "the fight"—assuring law enforcement, families, and even some former adversaries that redemption, faith, and change are possible, no matter how dark the past.

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For Listeners Who Missed the Episode

If you are interested in the realities of undercover law enforcement, criminal psychology, or simply want to hear a powerful real-life story of survival, trauma, brotherhood, and hope, this episode is mandatory listening. There is as much wisdom here about human nature and the price of violence as there is about tactics or crime.

Highly recommended for:

• Law enforcement professionals
• Anyone interested in organized crime or undercover operations
• Listeners seeking stories of faith, redemption, and personal transformation

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[End of Summary]

Transcript

[Sean Ryan]

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[Chris Bayless]

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[Chris Bayless]

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[Chris Bayless]

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[Chris Bayless]

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[Sean Ryan]

So I just spent about, I don't know, 12 hours digging through the Internet about you, and you are a bad holy. Whoa, dude.

[Chris Bayless]

I don't. I don't think so, but. Okay. Are you sure you had Chris Bayless? It wasn't some other guy with a different name?

[Sean Ryan]

I'm pretty sure.

[Chris Bayless]

Are you sure?

[Sean Ryan]

Okay, but. And the first ATF agents agent I've ever had on the show.

[Chris Bayless]

I hope you don't screw it up for the rest of the fricking agency.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, man.

[Chris Bayless]

But I'm sure you'll get some bad reviews on talking to an ATF guy.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm sure I will, too, but who cares? I get bad reviews all the time.

[Chris Bayless]

There you go. Right on.

[Sean Ryan]

But I want to start off with a introduction, so to prove my point.

[Chris Bayless]

Here. Okay.

[Sean Ryan]

Chris Bayless, 30 year ATF special agent. Spent the majority of your career undercover. Infiltrated the Hell's Henchmen motorcycle club and was inside when they patched over to become the Hells Angels. Planning the club's first plague in the Midwest. Your undercover intelligence helped build the federal RICO case that took down Mel Chancey and the Chicago Hells Angels leadership partners with J. Dobbins, the agent who later infiltrated the Hells Angels in Arizona. Personally involved in more than 100 stash house sting operations across the country. Had partner shot and killed. Continued to work for three decades. Suspects plan to kill you on roughly half of your operations. One crew planned to poke holes in your stomach and to sink your body in a river. Got locked in a bar with a 6 foot 9, 300 pound biker outlaw enforcer. While you were wearing a wire. You fought your way out your stash house operations. Cut shoot shootings in half in Oakland. Made 70 arrests in Phoenix. Became a public face of ATF's defense against entrapment and racial bias allegations from federal judges. And today you're retired, outspoken and ready to tell the story you couldn't tell for 30 years.

[Chris Bayless]

Wow.

[Sean Ryan]

And I had to dub that down.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah. That's very nice. Sounds like you gotta go. Yeah, I don't Know who that guy is, but you should have him on your show.

[Sean Ryan]

But. Well, I got something I want to give you. Okay, so let me grab it here real quick.

[Chris Bayless]

Holy Nike.

[Sean Ryan]

So

[Chris Bayless]

I've always.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, never in a million years would I think I would be willingly. Willingly giving an ATF agent a short barrel rifle and a suppressor.

[Chris Bayless]

I love it.

[Sean Ryan]

So I got some buddies over at sig. One really good buddy. His name's Jason. He's the VP of marketing over there.

[Chris Bayless]

That is a fantastic platform, man.

[Sean Ryan]

Found out you were coming on and surprised me. Once you give an ATF agent a short barrel rifle and a suppressor.

[Chris Bayless]

So there you have it. Are you kidding me?

[Sean Ryan]

If you have you. You familiar with that?

[Chris Bayless]

Oh, yes. This particular shooter. No, no, but the, the platform, absolutely. I, I can see right now the, the optics. This is like, this is it.

[Sean Ryan]

We're gonna break it in today. You're gonna love it.

[Chris Bayless]

Awesome.

[Sean Ryan]

You're gonna love that thing, my brother.

[Chris Bayless]

This is absolutely. I got a quick SIG story. I'll tell you that. And this is. I love sig, first of all. So we transitioned from wheel guns and our first semi autos was the Sigaur. And I had a 226.

[Sean Ryan]

And you used the 226.

[Chris Bayless]

I love it.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, I used a 226.

[Chris Bayless]

So I was in it right after we did the transition, you know, to semi from the wheel gun. We were unfortunately in a shooting in Joliet, Illinois. And so everything was fine on the shooting. Get back. Shooting review team comes out. They didn't care about anything other than did you decock before you put it back in the whole skate? And I was like, well, what about the guys that were shooting at us? They're like, yeah, yeah, whatever. Did you decock before you put a holster? And I was like, you know what I did. They just wanted to make sure that during that transitional period, we got that muscle memory for the decock. And it was hilarious. And that was the. That's the only thing they really care about. They said everything else. I go, well, this happened. This happened. They're like, yeah, fine. However did you decock before you holstered the gun up? And I was like, yes, I did.

[Sean Ryan]

That sounds like a conversation that would be had in the SEAL teams as well.

[Chris Bayless]

So, yeah, it was kind of funny. But no, I love. I shot six my whole life and I, I. It's a great, It's a great pistol, man. Right on.

[Sean Ryan]

I love it too. I love that. One more, though.

[Chris Bayless]

No, brother, this is like If Christmas. This is Christmas right now for me, because this is. We have a few AR platforms at our house. Maybe, Maybe not. But this is what. This is definitely what. Know. If I had the, like, Christmas list of every checkoff. So please thank your. Your friends, man. I greatly appreciate it. That's. That's. That's. It's exciting. Right on.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on. I got another person for you, too. Is exciting.

[Chris Bayless]

This is where it's at.

[Sean Ryan]

Gummy bears.

[Chris Bayless]

And I thank you for that. I thank you for that.

[Sean Ryan]

You're welcome.

[Chris Bayless]

If you don't mind, I. I don't have a. A long gun to give you.

[Sean Ryan]

That's all right.

[Chris Bayless]

However, I do have a couple of things. This. You could. This is my wife's. All right. No guy gives another guy anything that's in a freaking envelope. Right? So I told her. I go, I can't do that. And she's like, no, no, you can't. All right, this is. We have another advanced undercover program. This is our. Our coin. I don't know if you collect coins or not, but this is. It's. It's a small group of individuals, very small group of guys. They do stuff all over the country and other places. It's just a. It's. It's a small group, but they're highly motivated individuals and to this day, still do some incredible stuff undercover. So thank you. Oh, you're welcome. And then this is. This is a compass that I got you, because especially with your stuff, when it comes to exploitation of children that you've been doing and stuff like that, it's hard not to, you know, mentally, when you see that and you do that kind of work. And I know people that are in that investigative arm. It takes a toll, man. And when you see that, you get so freaking mad that you just want to tear people's throats out that participate in that type of activity. So this is a compass, and the inscription is, first, seek the counsel of the Lord. And so that's a Bible verse that King Jehoshaphat was asked to participate in a war with the. The king of Israel. And he said, okay, but first seek the counsel of the Lord. Well, the King of Israel didn't. They got their ass handed to him. So going back to it, everybody we look at, when you're fighting those demons and you're going out and fighting those people, man, you got to stay in that. Stay in that zone and seek the first. Seek the counsel of the Lord, man. And I can tell you from my own experiences, that really is something else. Man, it really gives you a sense of peace and, you know, what direction you're going to. So good luck with all that, man. Thank you. I'm glad you're in the fight. Seriously.

[Sean Ryan]

That's heartfelt.

[Chris Bayless]

Thank you.

[Sean Ryan]

That means a hell of a lot.

[Chris Bayless]

Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.

[Sean Ryan]

Thank you. One more thing.

[Chris Bayless]

Sure.

[Sean Ryan]

Before we get going, I got a Patreon account.

[Chris Bayless]

Okay.

[Sean Ryan]

It's a subscription account. They're the reason that we get to sit down here today so they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question. This is from James Cutbirth. What key lessons from your career would you impart to current law enforcement professionals? And how was your perspective on redemption and second chances evolved when reflecting on individuals who, like Mel Chancey, have left that lifestyle behind?

[Chris Bayless]

Well, I would say for law enforcement today, I think just. And I started in 1987, I think the level of professionalism that's out there today around the country of the guys that are first responders in law enforcement is. It's awesome. These guys, I've been involved in helping with training at different points in time, and these guys are all dedicated to duty. I think finding that balance of home life and your family and still going out and doing this stuff every day, I mean, that's paramount. I think that the redemption of Mel Chancey is. That's the reason I'm here. It's not about doing all this undercover or infiltrating, whatever. That story's been told, like a million times. But a guy that. That would actually go from living that life of violence and then making a change, finding the Lord and changing his life and doing it for all the right reasons, and what this guy's become now, it's amazing. And I'm proud to be his friend.

[Sean Ryan]

It's a hell of a guy. Learned that yesterday.

[Chris Bayless]

He's a piece of work. Wow.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

But. Well, thank you. So I got. This is a little off topic before we get into your story, but I was reading something or talking to somebody I can't remember maybe a couple weeks ago, and it was about undercover agents, federal agents, state law, whatever, local police, atf, CIA, dea. And it was talking about AI and facial recognition. And actually it was a conversation with somebody that an old friend from my previous life, and they were talking about. I think what they were saying was that agency will not be traveling with pseudo names anymore. And I was like, what? What the fuck do you mean, they're not traveling with pseudo names? And then it went into facial recognition and AI and how. How easy it is to dig shit up on people and basically said that they were. Nobody will be traveling under. Everybody will be traveling under true name. And there may not be undercover agents much longer. Yeah, you heard of this?

[Chris Bayless]

Yes and no. I think the people that the AI stuff is just exponentially exploded across the board. And from a security standpoint, we're always working. Law enforcement is always like a step behind because we're trying to generally catch up to whatever the current things are that are going to be a threat to us is what we do. And I know there's guys now in our program, the undercover program, advanced undercover program. They're working on how we're going to deal with that and the steps we're taking so far to kind of what can we put out. But it, it like we were saying exponentially so fast has grown so quickly. It's. It's very, very, very difficult and it will be harder to do if you're in a short, like you're just in like a town and you're just buying a couple guns off a gang banger or, you know, you're buying dope on a smaller scale, you're probably not going to run into it. But you will run into it when you start to do groups, organized groups, because, you know, at the end of the day, they're doing their homework on us every day. They learn how we do. You know, if you talked to Mel yesterday, he was like, I know about rico. I was trying to avoid rico. Well, we still got you anyway because, you know, you didn't think it quite all the way through. And so we were able to get you. However, you know, there's always a learning curve on both ends. And, you know, we've got some incredible adversaries in the criminal community that are looking to really put it on us. Yeah. And we were like, we've got adversaries around the world that are looking destroy us, you know, and they can't get us, can't invade us. You know, we got two oceans and some land above and below, but the only way they can do us is to get us from inside. So you're seeing a rise of these other, these violent groups, not only just street gangs and hello, motorcycle gang stuff, but everything else that's out there that's trying to put us down. Man,

[Sean Ryan]

it's pretty crazy how fast the technology is developing and what it's affecting and. And that's just something I never thought I'd hear.

[Chris Bayless]

Exactly. I mean, we are backstopping. Used to be you got a criminal History and an undercover driver's license and you were good to go. If somebody had the ability to run like a credit history, you know, we were backstopped up all through that. You could do a pretty decent deep dive into somebody from where it was before when I first started working. And up until probably up until the point where I retired, it's really. I think it's kicked off in the last four or five years. Wow. Just immensely. But our, the people we had worked a lot with some people in Bragg and stuff and helped craft those backstopping measures for different groups and including ours.

[Sean Ryan]

Gotcha.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, man.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, with the facial recognition, I mean, if you had any social profile as a kid, by the time, you know, you graduate the academy for atf, I mean, you're fucked.

[Chris Bayless]

You are. You're totally screwed. Yeah. You really are. And it's like, I have nothing. So if you want to, like, somebody wants to. I have no social media. I mean, I, I creep on my, My wife's every now and then to see what like everybody in high school was doing, but beyond that, I don't, I don't do any of that stuff, man. Yeah, I just, I hunker down.

[Sean Ryan]

Good for you.

[Chris Bayless]

Got my own little sister. You, however, I think, you know, really, you can't even have an opinion anymore without somebody wanting to tear your throat out or kill you.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, yeah, tell me about it.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, I'm sure. And I know. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

If you don't think like me, you.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah. I'm gonna kill you. Like, okay, well, bring it through. Yeah, well. And that's it. I mean, and that's what I, you know, in my opinion, it's just like the way, again, you can't invade us, our adversaries around the world who want to see us fail. They. They can't invade us. They cannot take us. They cannot beat our freaking military. Yeah, they cannot. But they can. They can put fentanyl into our country. Yeah. And they can let. Maduro can let every criminal out of the Venezuela prison and move them into the United States. That's that slow erosion of our country that. That is happening, you know, and people are just oblivious to it.

[Sean Ryan]

And the, in the, the propaganda too. The bad armies, the.

[Chris Bayless]

I know, brother narratives.

[Sean Ryan]

It's. It's Warfare's definitely changed. That's for damn.

[Chris Bayless]

Oh, no doubt. But you look at like, I have a nephew that's over there now doing stuff. And you know, I'm proud as hell of him and he's proud of hell to be there. Yep, yep.

[Sean Ryan]

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[Chris Bayless]

All right.

[Sean Ryan]

Where'd you grow up?

[Chris Bayless]

I grew up in suburbs of Chicago, not too far from from where Mel grew up. So we in the same neighborhood. Some of Mel's friends are actually their parents live right behind my mom and dad, where my mom and dad lived, Palace Heights. So I grew up regular blue collar. Everybody knows your neighbors. Nobody had any money where we were at, so we had just a nice little sense of community. In the neighborhood that I grew up in was very good. We had the neighbors, the bios. I remember my dad. Those guys had no money, and they would get together, smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and figure out how. All right, you're working three jobs here. I'm working two jobs here. We only have two cars. Your wife wants to go to nursing school. Let's buy a car together and then we'll rotate. That'll be the car that your wife takes to nursing school. And these guys would come up with this, just trying how to. To get ahead and. And live their life. And they were just. I would. I remember I was like, probably six or seven listening to their conversation. Mr. Bale and my dad just sitting down, drinking a cup of coffee, trying to figure out how they're going to navigate life. Damn right on, you know, and even I look back now and like, you know how everybody gets it with their dad at some point. My dad was the biggest ass that I'd ever met in my life from the time I was 17 to, like 22. And then all of a sudden, after I was 22, I was like, you know what? This guy's just. Maybe he Knows a couple things. Maybe he's lived a little bit of life, so. Yeah, but that's kind of how I grew up. Those were. That's. That's where I was at.

[Sean Ryan]

What were you into?

[Chris Bayless]

Play baseball?

[Sean Ryan]

Athletic.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, yeah, played baseball and just. I was on a couple traveling baseball teams, you know, all through high school. But I had jobs. I worked at a lumberyard, so I started working there and I would do side jobs out of the lumberyard. My dad was a. Was a science teacher, but he made his money doing side jobs in construction. He was. That guy could fix anything, do anything. So great skill set as far as that goes. Now, you know, I could pretty much put additions on my house if I wanted to. You know, I don't do that anymore, but when I had to, I could. So that's kind of how I just kind of started. I always. I was a night watchman at the local Payless pool, which meant when the manager left at 10 o' clock at night, all my friends came over with beer and tunes and we swam and drank all night while I was watching to make sure nothing happened at the pool. So, yeah, that was. That was kind of where I grew up at. It was. We, like Mel talks about too, when we were growing up, that whole area, kids were always fighting. Everybody was quick to go to hands, you know, I mean, but it was. It was just the south side of Chicago, man. That's just how it was. South suburbs.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you guys know each other at all?

[Chris Bayless]

I knew of him. You did, by being virtua of the Hell's angel president, but I had never met him. But I knew it was funny. The local attorney, local prosecutor for Palos Heights, used to train at the same gym that Mel did. And Mel was friends. They talked together. They weren't going out for coffee friends, but they knew each other. And Mel let him write. He wrote a Harley. So Mel let him right next to him one time, going from point A to point B or something like that. Well, that guy was best friends with my mom and dad. So when we were doing the Hells angel case, he was talking to my mom about something and my mom goes, well, I think he's doing some motorcycle. And so he kind of. And I like. So right away, Mom's Opsec was freaking completely cut off at that point. We had to put her on probation for a while on what she said. But that was in that community. Everybody kind of knew each other. And you knew who the asshole kids were, and you knew who the good kids were. And you know you tried to stay away from the kids, but, you know, you tend to run around with them a little bit from time to time. So. Yeah, so that was kind of where both of us grew up at. You know, it's kind of the. The south suburbs of the 70s and 80s, 60s and 70s. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Where do we go from here?

[Chris Bayless]

I don't know. What would you like to get into? I went to college and didn't like it, but I got through it. I have a degree in environmental studies, biochem, but I knew there was no way I wanted anything to do with that. So I quickly got doubled up and got an associate's degree in criminal justice. And I think the first thought about doing law enforcement came from. We had taken. I went to a school, Manchester College in Indiana. And Indianapolis, Indiana, has a boys school down there for, you know, juvenile delinquents, as they used to call them, kids that had done some serious crime, and they were down there locked up. We'd done like an outside tour, and we were able to interview one kid. And on the way back, I was telling the professor, I go, you know what? Why don't. I'm young enough. I go, how about you just put me in there as an inmate for three weeks, and I'll tell you what's really going on, you know, because it just seemed like the kid was too polished that was talking about the institution and how things were. And of course, you talk to the, you know, the supervisors and the social workers and things like that. But I was like, man, you really want to know what's going on? I go, put me in there. And he's like, would you go? And I go, in a minute. No problem. So we get back to college, and he goes, I'm going to run it up to Chain and see what will happen. I'm like, all right. So I'm getting kind of excited. I'm like, man, I'm going to. I'm going to go down there and be locked up and see what happens and see what I can learn. And I meet him, like, the next day, and he goes, there's no way they're going to let you go down there and be locked up in this place. I go, come on, man. I'll sign our thing and get out. And so that was my first. Like, if you really want to know what's going on, you know, go out and meet these guys face to face and. And figure it out.

[Sean Ryan]

How old were you then?

[Chris Bayless]

19, 20.

[Sean Ryan]

So you wanted to do undercover work?

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, I didn't really Know that. But what that was. But I thought, what better way? You know, I can listen to a million guys tell me what time of day it is about something over here. Well, you've never been there, so you know, what if we go there and let's take a look and figure it out. So it seems like a better option.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you have any ambition to be a law enforcement officer as a kid?

[Chris Bayless]

I took a vice and drug abuse class and the guy that did it was a Cook county sheriff's deputy that was doing undercover and he was telling a couple stories and I was like, oh yeah, that's. And then my baseball coach was Chicago Police department violent crimes detective. And he was like just. He was just this good looking, ages, Rico Suave kind of guy. He just was such a. And a good man, a great coach. And I told him after listening to a couple stories, you know, I was like, you know, Pete, I think I want to be a cop. He goes, you want to go to the feds? He goes, don't. He goes, chicago's done. And this is like 1976. He goes, get. He goes, don't go to the city. He goes, try for the federal government. And I was like, all right. So I had no idea I would end up doing that. But just how that guy's Persona was, who he was as a person and how he carried himself, I was like, you know, I would want to be that guy. You know, he was no nonsense, but very fair. And then our youth group at church, we had a female police officer, Sugat, who was. She ended up retiring as a lieutenant on a suburban department. Another just. I just liked the way they had that calm around them. You know, things didn't. They weren't. Flying off the handle and getting all spun up on stuff. They just had an easygoing, problem solving type mentality. And I thought, yeah, that's. I think I want to be like that. And so that was kind of like for me, that's kind of got me into it.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on, right on. Why did you pick the atf?

[Chris Bayless]

I had. My ex brother in law was with DEA in Miami back in the cocaine cowboy days.

[Sean Ryan]

Holy. And oh, but he's got some stories.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, he's got a couple. He transferred DE up to Detroit and then he wanted to get back to Chicago. And Chicago was. ATF was hiring at the time and so they took him as a lateral. So he got to atf. He really didn't know about a lot about at. He worked with them in, in Florida, in Miami back in the day. But said didn't know a lot of the guys or stuff. And he got in. He goes, man, this is awesome. He goes, this is like fricking we're small. He called it the Marine Corps of Federal law enforcement. He goes, you got no money, no support, but hey, can you go out here and kick ass and get with these friggin most violent guys and put them in jail? And he dug it. And I thought, all right. And then I had another friend that was a Cook County State's Attorney. His brother was an ATF agent up in Rockford, Illinois. So I talked to him about it and he says, man, best job ever. And I'm like, wow. So I just. Right place at the right time, got an application in, took the test and took me about two years to get, finally get on, get hired.

[Sean Ryan]

Really, what took so long? Just, just.

[Chris Bayless]

It was background check. Yeah, it was background check stuff. And then there was, there was a hiring freeze I think in 85 or 86. They weren't putting people on, so had to wait for that to end. And then ATF hired, Mass hired between 86 and probably 90. They put on a lot of people. They finally got the okay to do it and they put a lot of people on. And, and we were doing, we're doing pretty good agent wise at that point. I think we had maybe 2, 300 agents around the country at that point at the most. And we still don't have pretty much any more than 2300 agents around the country. We've never, we've always been that political football, you know, the three largest lobbying groups, alcohol, tobacco and firearms in D.C. so it was always in their best interest to keep us functioning. But let's not give them a lot of money. I think Reagan actually was going to disband us at one point. And we had two agents were working the South Florida Violent Crimes Task Force during the Colombian Marilito Cuban War, the cocaine cowboys days. And we had two agents get killed down there undercover while they were doing the job. And they had gotten rift notices that basically they're going to disband atf, you know, at some point here. And you guys and these guys went out and did the job anyway. And I was like, you know, this, I like, I like how these guys are thinking. And I was like, I, it'd be an honor to be a part of that. People that like, you're may not have a job in the next six months, year, year and a half, but go down there, do it anyway. It was part of the vice presidential Task force that Reagan had. I think Bush was the one that ran it. Yeah, we had Eddie Benito's and Ariel Reels were shot in two separate undercover deals and killed. So it was that kind of started. People are like, well, what are these guys doing? You know, they take in some farmer's shotgun from up in northern Michigan and they're like, no, these guys are down there going face to face and toe to toe with some bad people. Yeah. So it kind of changed the mentality a little bit at that point. They didn't disband us, and then we were kind of off to the races after that.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow. So ATF's always been hated?

[Chris Bayless]

Oh, yeah, yeah, we kind of. Yeah, we're okay.

[Sean Ryan]

So what is. What is. Could you just describe what is the job of the atf? Because all we. All we hear is they're taking our short barrel rifles, they're taking suppressors, carbine. Pistols are illegal today. Tomorrow they're legal, next week they're illegal again. So what is the.

[Chris Bayless]

All right, so ATF has two functions. There's a regulatory function. It's a regulatory side of the house. So the explosives, firearms licensing, ffl, explosive storage and sales of explosive, it's all kind of run through atf. So they keep a lid on, not a lid on, but they can track explosives. You know, that kind of. The FFLs that have a license, you know, they do inspections to make sure they're current, you know, following the protocol and stuff like that. And then you've got the enforcement side. And that's the side I worked on. And so that was from the minute I started, it was always about violent crime. And so what you would have is the legislature won't do its job completely and say this is legal or this is illegal. So they'll say, okay, short barreled rifle. Well, what constitute a short barrel rifle? So ATF then has to make a decision using regional Counsel and Firearms Technology branch guys to get together and they're like, okay, does this fit what the intent of the legislature was? And then sometimes they're like, yes, so you can't have this. Sometimes it's no, so you can't have this. So it's that constant. Rather than be specific about what's legal and is illegal, these guys have led it up to. And we're not the only agency that they've doled that out to. DEA does that for some of the drug stuff. Environmental Protection Agency, you know, they come up with their own policies and procedures what people can do and can't do based on you know what they've been powers they've been given from Congress. So in my opinion atf, it should be cut and dry. This is it, this isn't it. Everybody knows, let's go here. But I think you could. The silencer stuff and the machine guns and stuff like that, I think if I'm not mistaken, it was 1936 where they enacted the first statute against that. And it wasn't that they made silencers and machine guns illegal. What they said was, okay, you know, the government at that point still believed in the sovereignty of the states. So states right to regulate itself. So what they did was say, okay, we're going to put a tax on it. You can have a machine gun, but you got to call us up, pay $250, whatever the tax was, the transfer tax and let us know you had it. It's just like a bomb. You could build your own bomb if you like, but you got to put a serial number on it and you got to pay the tax. Well, no bad guy is going to do that, pay the tax or put a serial number on a destructive device. And so that's where you come in. Now you have an unregistered, an NFA or unregistered, unregistered machine gun or shotgun. So now ETF can take action against you.

[Sean Ryan]

Gotcha. Gotcha. So how was it, how was the academy?

[Chris Bayless]

When I went through? It was, it was eight weeks of basic criminal investigation school and it was eight weeks of just stuff specific to ATF. So it was 16 weeks altogether. Now I still teach down there. I teach field ops and now it's 26 weeks.

[Sean Ryan]

Holy shit.

[Chris Bayless]

So it's a pretty, they've really, I was telling you a great friend of mine, Sergeant Lesner from the Ranger battalions, now he runs our training down there and has for the last few years and just a completely squared away kid. And well, not kid anymore. He's close to retirement. But I'm old so everybody that's still quasi on a job as a kid, but just a squared away guy and we have over the years we've, we have a couple seals that are ATF agents. We have a lot of Ranger battalion guys, a lot of marines and it's, it's a good group of. And then we have, you know, right out of college kids too, that kind of thing. So it's a good mix. The last class I taught at most recently they were, they were really good, really squared away. It was fun to watch them like kind of progress. And then I teach field Ops, which is the last two weeks where we had like a whole city set up role players. And so they work a case from beginning to end over that two work period of time. We do undercover, we deal with informants, we do search warrants. We have a. A robbery situation where you got to go in and extract the undercover or the CI. We've got hostage barricaded situation. So they run through all this stuff, and hopefully they've learned everything they've learned in all the blocks building up to that point, then now's their time to execute it. So it's, it's. It's fun. It's, it's. It's the most enjoyable part of. Of the Academy.

[Sean Ryan]

Final ftx.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, it's awesome.

[Sean Ryan]

What did you want to do? Did you want to go undercover right off the bat?

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, I. I was lucky. I got some great mentors when I started. I started in 87, got through the academy. I was doing stuff, working undercover by mid-88.

[Sean Ryan]

You were undercover within a year?

[Chris Bayless]

Oh, yeah. That was back in the day where, here's your gun and badge, go catch somebody. Like, okay. You know, it was. Like I said, it was a. Was kind of a whole different program. And my boss, the first day on the job goes, I don't know what you know about undercover work or ATF work or federal law enforcement. He goes, my group works undercover. That's what we do. He goes, there's a Corvette over there. There's money in this box. You know, you want to use a different gun, get a different gun, but go out there, start buying doping guns and make some arrests. And I was like, right fucking on, man.

[Sean Ryan]

Holy shit.

[Chris Bayless]

Like, I'm good to go.

[Sean Ryan]

That's awesome.

[Chris Bayless]

And then there was a guy, John Retuno, which was probably, we have some great undercover agents in atf. I don't nobody hears about them or anything, but I look at those guys, and they're just unbelievable. What they've done. Had this guy, John Ratuno, the Vice Lord street gang was remanufacturing hand grenades. And so what they're doing, they're going to an army surplus shop, and they'd get the Mark Deuce, you know, the frag from World War II. They'd buy a bunch of those, and then they would also buy the old smoke grenade fuses, which are completely different than an actual hand grenade fuse. This has a timer. This one doesn't. So when they repacked all the black powder that they did in the hand grenade and they screwed in this fuse, three guys Showed up to the hospital with half their face blown off, their arm gone. Because they pulled the thing and thought, watch this, you know, this will be funny, hold my beer. And then the thing goes off immediately because there's no delay. So they were like. So they had a couple of guys. So John Ratuno interviews one of these guys because obviously it's a destructive device and that would fall into. It's basically a bomb. So John interviews this kid and he, he was so pissed off because the gang hadn't come put any money, you know, helped his family out or anything. He's got no arm. So he goes, I'll tell you what's going on. And so John gets his kid to introduce him to the. Was the Undertakers. It was a faction of the Vice Lord street gang. And we were getting showing up Chicago PD was picking up these devices that had exploded. Obviously they found some way to get it away from them before it blew them up. So what they started doing was they put everything in a ball mason jar and screw the top on, they pull the pin and then they would throw the mason jar, it would break and then the poon would expel and it would set off the bomb. So that's how they were reconfiguring their, their hand grenades. So John gets introduced to these Undertaker vice lords and he starts buying these remanufactured they'd had, they had like, I don't know, 60 of them. So John bought immediately. You got to get that, we got to get that off the street, you know. So John buys like all of them. Well, he kind of even gracious aged himself and to the club. So he ends up, or to the gang, he ends up doing in a two year period of time undercover every day with these. He did 120 defendants, all gun and dope buys, I don't at least a dozen murders. They ended up, I think charging that he'd got conversation about their criminal activity and what they were doing. And they ended up arresting them on what's called a cce. Continuing criminal enterprise where you have a leader and then you're five or more people underneath you that, that pay up to or take orders from the leadership. So it's a, it's a way to get everybody wrapped up and so they charge him with the CCE. So he did 120 defendants. And I would watch him every day go to the west side of Chicago, the worst neighborhood in the city. He's just this yoked up Italian dude and he was just whipping a game on these guys. Wow, I was like. I was like, I want to. I want to be that guy. And so I started like, okay, let's figure this out. You know, what can I do? And those are guys. I worked in an organized crime group, and we had two guys, John Mazzola and Jimmy Delordo. And they were like old school Italian paisans from the. From the south side. But they had a great ability to read people, and they were just great true investigators. So they had. They were. They solved murders. And it's usually a firearm was involved. The one case they did on a guy, Werner Hartman, was a real rich man that had those stereo company, a stereo car installation. So you put your stereo in your car and got huge speakers and stuff like that. And he was a multimillionaire. Falls in love with the stripper, of course, and then tales old as time ends up, he's got two kids that he's with. The stripper's actually got a boyfriend. Surprise. And so he takes a Mac 10 that someone had converted to full automatic and kills him one night. So because it was clearly, it was a machine gun, by how the pattern was, John Mazzola, one of the agents, was working another case and was able to show that the guy that made and sold the machine gun to this guy was also a guy that John had bought a machine gun off of also. And they started to get conversation. So they were kind of putting two to two together. They go up and they figured obviously she was involved. They kind of ID'd who the shooter was. It was the boyfriend of the stripper. And I remember Jimmy Delordo. They had changed the will so his little girls got nothing out of his $2 million life insurance policy. But the stripper girlfriend got everything. So someone had to change not only the will, but also the life insurance policy. And the only person that could do that would be the guy that sold him the policy. So they get all the bank records from this, from this company. And Jimmy tells me, and I'm brand new, and he would always stick his, like a tongue. And when he was thinking about something, he goes, that lazy wrote that guy a check. He goes, the lazy bitch wrote a check. I'm sure of it. So he gets the bank records. So I'm sipping through all these checks. He goes, look for one, about 10 to 20 grand that went to this guy. I'm digging through like four or five days bank records, going through, going through. Sure enough, there's a check, $15,000 that she had written to the insurance guy to change the beneficiaries of the insurance. And so he ends up going to jail with her and to shoot her and stuff. But that was like, those were the cases I was exposed to when I first started. And I was like, man, this is what I want to do. So it's kind of different than what the general perspective of ATF is and how we do what we do. But I worked. That's, that's all I ever did was cases like that. And I mean, what do, what do

[Sean Ryan]

you do when they say you had an eight week academy? You show up and they say there's cash, there's guns, there's fucking cars. Go get bad guys. Where do you start? Well, I have no network.

[Chris Bayless]

Well, it's, that's the first thing you do is that network. And I, a couple guys in the group said, here's a couple Illinois state troopers that we work for. I ended up going down to Illinois State Police Dicker District 5 post in Juliet. And I met some guys in the cooperative police assistant team, they called it cpat. And I just introduced myself and I said, hey man, this is kind of my area. I go, if you guys can plug me in on anything, you know, I'll do whatever it takes. They were working some stolen cars from some organized crime guys. So the first couple of things I did was just buy stolen autos for these guys out of the task force. And so that's kind of how I got started. And then I would always ask, you guys got any pistols? Got any guns? And it was always gang bangers or you know, some organized group that was into nefarious activity. And so, you know, I just embed myself with those guys. And we do the best we can to put a case on them. And that's.

[Sean Ryan]

How would you embed. I mean, especially I would get informed as a new guy.

[Chris Bayless]

There's you could do cold call, which is one way you just show up.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you guys train for this shit in the academy?

[Chris Bayless]

Back then, at the end, the last two weeks, that field operations was the same thing. We've been teaching that since, you know, Jesus lost his sandals.

[Sean Ryan]

And that's enough. I mean, I guess.

[Chris Bayless]

No, actually, no, it's, it's not enough. We have advanced schools that we put on too, but back in the day, at the time it was like throwing the water to learn how to swim. And so that's how you cut your teeth. We just put your head in the game and start, start rolling. That's what we did.

[Sean Ryan]

So what, what did you do specifically on the network? Who do you Start with.

[Chris Bayless]

I started with the Illinois State Police. And we. I was doing. I did some gang groups down there, and I kind of rolled into. By 90, had done. The Outlaws motorcycle gang, Had a clubhouse in Juliet and had developed an informant that I knew about motorcycle gangs. And we talk about them, and we're, you know, we're instructed on them along with traditional organized crime and street gangs, you know, in. In the academy. And we had developed an informant that was associated with them. And I. I knew about him, but I didn't. I didn't know what the lifestyle was. I didn't know, you know, I could ride a Harley with no problem, but I didn't know about gangs. So the informant kind of brought me up to speed how things work and introduced me to a couple of the people in the Joliet. Joliet group of the Outlaws. And so I bought. We bought dope out of the clubhouse, let dope off a few of the guys. They all had guns. So after we did some dope buys, I found that I'd gotten introduced to the Colombian that was actually providing the cocaine to not only the allies, but everybody else, you know, in that area. So I kind of moved over into his group, and I bought dope and some pistols off of his underlings. And then we rolled up to a guy that was his number two, bought some dope off that guy and a pistol. We do a search warrant. He cooperates. We have the Colombian deliver five keys to us, and then we took him off. So it's one of those things where you start building. I started getting. Once you get in the criminal community and you start, you know, you show yourself as a criminal or a guy that's hungry, looking to come up, you know, I'm just trying to come up, you know, trying to make money. Just one of you, and you got a little bit of gift of gab, you know, at that time, I just, for whatever reason, had the ability to do that. And so we rolled through the Outlaws. We ended up seizing their clubhouse in Joliet on oak Street, I think 90 or 90, and it might have been later, 92, maybe. So we did, I think, four or five of those guys. We did the Colombian, and then we did the Colombian's group. So it was like my first, like, getting into an actual group or organization and kind of seeing how it. How the criminal community really runs, you know.

[Sean Ryan]

But there's a lot more to it than that. I mean, I've. I've not done undercover work near as extensive as you have, but I've done it on multiple arc agents for multiple outfits. I mean, there's just. There's a lot to deal with. How do you do when you're conducting surveillance as an undercover guy? I mean, everybody that passes by, you slip. The paranoia that you deal with is everybody's watching me. I'm compromised at every corner I go to. Oh, why did that guy drive by so slow?

[Chris Bayless]

That hyper vigilance.

[Sean Ryan]

Who's this with the dog that just took a next. You know what I mean? Like, what? That's. How are you?

[Chris Bayless]

That's why, after 30 years of doing it, I was in my basement in the middle of night, pacing back and forth because I was like, I had lost my mind.

[Sean Ryan]

And I mean, you. So you go with a biker, the outlaws, then you're in the Colombian cartel. I mean, it's just. So you're just. You continue to weave through these things, and you're just building more and more and more.

[Chris Bayless]

Correct. Undercover is like sales. At the end of the day, it's your salesman. So I go in, I meet a guy. Sometimes it's a cold call. Sales. Like, hey, how you doing? I think you need windows, right? Let me. I'm going to sell you some windows. Or you might get an introduction from somebody. So say, this is my friend, or this is my cousin, or this is a guy that, you know, he's trying to eat. Good guy, vouch for him. You might have that type of introduction, and then you just start to play off that, and it's about selling yourself. But you're right. It's this one guy at the academy. He said it so succinctly. He goes, if you ever see a swan going across a smooth pond and it looks beautiful, so swans just floating, but underneath is fricking. He's just paddling like a motherfucker to get across, but it looks smooth on the top. That's what undercover is in your head. You're thinking, how am I going to move this from point a to point B? Does this guy like me? Is he going to kill me? Is he going to rob me? We get robbed occasionally on a few times. Is he going to jerk his pistol and go to work? Is he set me up to get somebody else to do me? You know, it's all that. You're constantly thinking that and working in that in your head. What am I going to do if, you know, you're constantly reassessing a situation. Like when we do the. The bike gang stuff after being with the club, like Mel's guys when they were henchmen up in Rockford, you know, going to clubhouse. Not everybody likes you. You know, I think I'm a pretty personal guy and everybody should love me. But you get in that mix with these people, and some people are like, there's something about you I don't fucking like. And you're like, okay, so now how am I going to win over this guy? Am I going to. I'm not going to be patting him on the head. No, come on, man, like me. So you got to figure a way to get this guy to like you. And a lot of. Sometimes we'll do street theater where we'll do some other criminal act with another agent, and this guy will watch. You're like, okay, well, maybe this guy's about it. And so we do that. And it undercover is like, how do you stage that? We just figure out we do. I don't want to give away too much stuff because guys are out there still doing it, but we'll do a crime. We might hire these guys to act as a lookout. Here's all you need to do. Like, I one time may or may not have gone up to a guy and said, hey, look, man, $500. All I need to do is have a walkie talkie and be at the end of this road. If you see anything, a car that even a car, even if it's not a copy, you get on right away and you say, hey, it does look good. I go, and then you drive away. It's all I needed to do. But while I'm doing that, I got a bag of guns. And he's like, what are you up to? I'm like, just watch for the car. Like, okay, now, I haven't told him anything, but he's starting to think in his head, what dude up to, you know, what's he got going on? Then he want to know all criminal groups. Everybody's looking to move up, make more money, be more violent. So, like, if you're a guy that looks like you're a plug to get somebody into that, it's like, man, we'll see what those guys are about. We'll see if we can move the ball forward with those cats. And that's. That's kind of how it works. So street theater is a good way to. Time builds credibility. And for undercover stuff, not. You don't generally have a lot of time to build that credibility. A lot of these guys in the criminal community, they've known each other for years. They've been criminals for years. And so now I'm the new guy. And so now you got to kind of build that credibility in a short period of time. And sometimes it's, it's, it's hard to do. Sometimes it works. And sometimes they're like, once you just go away, like, okay, yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

When it comes to, I mean. So do you remember your first, your very first approach as an undercover guy?

[Chris Bayless]

What was, it was a sawed off shotgun from a guy named Pig.

[Sean Ryan]

What was, why were you after him?

[Chris Bayless]

I, I, it was a favor to a local law enforcement. A lot of times, like your local police department has resources, but they don't have undercover resources. So you might have the Al Capone in that, that community. This guy's name was Pig. He was Al Capone. He wasn't a cartel guy, but he was a guy that made the quality of everybody's life in that community because he was a bully, he was an, he just, nobody liked him. His name was big. So the sheriff called the CPAC guys and said, you guys got a guy. We might be able to get a guy to introduce a guy to. He's just, you know, he's got a sawed off shotgun he wants to sell. You know, that's like not a case we would normally do, but they needed Al Capone, who was Pig just removed from their community because it just made the quality of life of everybody else in that community. He was just that guy that was just a problem. And so I met Pig and it was my first, it was the first undercover deal other than the cars for a gun. And I was like, I mean, I was nervous. It's Pig. You know, this guy's fucking probably cartel level. Like, I'm thinking he's the Al Capone of, you know, forget the small town. It was Wilmington, Wilmington, Illinois, you know, population, you know, 120. People said, I'll go get Pig. So I get down there and the guy was just a, he was just an asshole, you know, so I bought the gun off him and then they, they took him off the next day and charged him in the state. So, but that's what my boss's attitude at that point in time was. The federal government atf, you know, local law enforcement is going to have so much that they can do and sometimes they can't maybe take it to the next step, maybe do a rico, which is, we're hard to do jurisdictionally. They might have a bad guy that's coming out of another jurisdiction into their jurisdiction, doing crime and then leaving, you know, and if they don't catch them here, it might be problematic for them to go to another jurisdiction to get them, like another state. So because of that, because we have stuff like RICO and things, we can. That jurisdiction, we don't have those problems anymore. So we can charge that crime. Excuse me, Whether the guy was over here or over here, the crime was here, and he's over here doing crime. We can charge them all together federally. And how.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, you're living in these communities sometimes.

[Chris Bayless]

Yes. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

So. And you were married during a lot of this?

[Chris Bayless]

I was married the first time for about. I have two wonderful kids. I think I got married young, and my first wife did not enjoy the job. I'll bet she did not enjoy it on any level. And I think that. And I was not. I was not a good person either, really. I was not good. I like to think of myself that I was. But I was like. I dove so much into doing the job that whatever she had going on, I was like. And then. And it wasn't. I'm not saying it was just me, you know, she had her issues, too. And we got to the point where I go, this is. This is not good. And she hated the job. Every day was a problem. Every day it was, why you do this? Why do you look like that? There's a lot of that. Like, I go to kids events, you know, and I'd look like, you know, some chooch, you know, and they'd be like, why is Zach's dad look like that? You know? And I would tell the kids were really good at not saying anything. I say, look, guys, we can't talk about what dad does. That's just the way it is. We had codes. Like, we had one problem. One time we ran into a guy, gave him the, like, hey, we gotta go. No questions asked, get in the car, we leave. Unfortunately, they knew way too much about violent crime and bad people at a very early age. That I look back now and I'm like, probably was a good thing. But so I was divorced. I separated and then eventually divorced around 92 or so. And it just. I got to delve into the job after that. But then the problem with my ex, not problem with my ex wife, it's that every other weekend you have the kids and Wednesdays. So I was broke, I had no money. So I was on the SRT team also at the same time. And so I had. My kit was always in the apartment I lived in, so the kids would dig through it and, you know, put on the helmet, put the vest on and carrier. And so I Said, hey, let's do quick peeks. They're like, what's that? I go, all right, let's say all the bad guys are in this room, and I put the stuffed animals on the bed. All right, you get one chance. You get a split second, one eye, quick peek. You come back, tell me how many. So we made it into a game. So we started out doing just quick peeks, like. And then my daughter, who is always way smarter than my son, I love them both. But she's an engineer, and he's in law enforcement. He couldn't do math. So that's what she was always. She picked up on everything. She was actually, by six or seven, the most tactical girl. I mean, the stuff that would come out of her mouth when we were doing stuff we had. I did one set up in where I was in the apartment. There were two doors on either side down the hallway, two doors, you got two problems, and then a third door. So you got three problems you got to solve as we move through to sweep this area. So, I mean, they're little, and I got him. Got a vest on and stuff. And so took turns being team leader. So my daughter would get in front right away. You know, she loved to. You know, so she would get up and she'd give this, and we'd wait, and she'd go. She'd give the nod. So I tap Zach, Zach taps her. She's like, go, go, go. So she would do a button hook, and she wants Zach to do across the room. And we'd have one of the. One of the stuffed animals that have a pistol, you know, is that a shooter? Don't shoot. You know, that kind of thing. And then it got even more involved to the point where I was like, okay. They'd like, okay, what are we doing today? And I'm like, all right, we got a warrant for Moose. Moose is a bad guy. Might. Might be two people in the place. I go, what. What kind of entry are we going to do? We going to do surround and call out? What are we going to do? So Zach, my son's like, dynamic entry. We're going in there. I'm like. Andy's like, well, there's two people in there also. Are they separate? She starts. She's like 7 at the time doing this. So we would get up to clear the door, and she'd say, shit. Like, Zach, when it was his team leader time, he'd go up. He's calling the shots. What's going to happen? And he gets up there and he's kind of hesitating because there's three problems he's got to solve. Doesn't know which room Moose is in. So what do we clear first? What's the most dangerous? So he gets up there and she goes, I hear from my daughter, 7 year old little girl, she goes, come on, Zach, work the problem. Oh, man. I was like, I love you, man.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Chris Bayless]

So that's how. That's how we kind of. That's what we did. We did that, you know, a bunch of times. And the unfortunate aspect of that was when I would go back to the. I had him on Wednesdays, so I would go, I brought them to the office. Sometimes they do their homework in the conference room and then we'd go out and do buys and then come back. So you had everybody in my group there and there'd be, you know, guns on the table and we're putting everything into evidence and stuff, and my kids are doing their homework. I remember one time it was the DC sniper. Remember when that guy was going around killing people?

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Bayless]

All right. So we were taking turns. People would be detailed out to D.C. and so Joey Rusevich was in my group and I got tasked. I was going to go out to D.C. but also the time I would have been out there was the first Daddy Daughter dance that I would have been able to go to. So Joey's in the room with me, my daughter's in there. He goes, you know what? He goes, I'll switch it up. I'll go, you know, and you can go to the dance. And I'm like, thanks, Joe, I appreciate that. So Joey catches the sniper. Well, he doesn't catch the sniper, but on the perp walk, when they come out, my kids are watching tv and there's Joey. He's caught the sniper. So my daughter's like calling me on the phone, dad not even going to believe it, watching tv. Joey caught the sniper. So here's my kids that they know what a sniper is. They know that he's killing people and taking their lives. So where their little heads were going at the time, I have no idea. But I'm sure they are two exceptional adults and it worked out okay. But I can't imagine what they must have been thinking at that time. And, you know, it just, it was weird. I talked to my daughter later. At one point, she actually talked to another agent's daughter that was having some issues. And I remember she said, she goes, being little and being with your group of guys, and I saw how they acted with you and when Joey said, you know, if your dad ever has a problem, I'm gonna go in and get him, she goes, I was like, well, you know, it's all cool in the zoo, man. Joey's gonna be there. If there's a problem, it'll be okay. And it was like, I was like, okay, I'm glad that you had that, you know, for yourself because I. There's a lot of people, kids in law enforcement, they do not end up faring very well. And it's not just specific law enforcement, it's anytime you have a father that's a little bit not there all the time. That's a tough thing, man. Fathers are very, very important.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, yeah, I'm realizing that I got a four year old boy and it's. He needs dad.

[Chris Bayless]

They all do, man. And you know, the breakdown of the family is one of the major problems in the country. You know, it's just that it, the nuclear family is, you know, just been shot. So.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Bayless]

So having that and having the kids be able to have those experiences, it was hard, I think a little bit. I was hard on them at different times, but they turned out okay. They're good. My daughter's an engineer. She's a biosystems and mechanical engineer. She makes like biodiesel and now she's working. She was in Cheyenne, Wyoming trying to be a. My dad was a kind of a horseman. He raised horses on a farm when he was a kid. He always wanted her to be a barrel racer. He goes, he called her Bug. Goes Bug. You got the perfect legs, you're strong, you're an athlete because you grip that horse. You're super light, man. That palmy was whipping you around that, that arena on those barrels. She never ended up doing it, but that was, that was like my dad's goal for her. Right on.

[Sean Ryan]

Kind of funny where I was going is, I mean you're undercover in the same town or in the same area that you're living and that's just something I've never ever had to do. Yeah, nor did I have a family when I was anyways. But so how, how are you mitigating your own paranoia? How are you keeping your family from being compromised, Killed being trailed, tipping off where your kids live, who your wife is. I mean, it's a lot of to think about that I've never had to think about.

[Chris Bayless]

When we first started doing it. The ability to find out who you were and where you were at was harder than it is now. Now there's, it's so Easy to do. So there is difference. I. We always got trained up when we were getting trained or we still train it now. You always wipe yourself off when you leave. If you gotta go back and do another run, go someplace else. We always have. We don't always have, but a lot of times we'll have an undercover apartment, get done doing a deal, go back to the undercover apartment. You got eyes on the undercover apartment. You'll be in there, you'll sit down. Let's relax for a while. Maybe go out, go to a bar, get a sandwich, come back to the undercover apartment and have everybody that's your crew that's watching you, observe to see, make sure everything is okay, and then go home from there. I used to do that for the Hills. Angel or henchman case had an undercover apartment about 30 miles outside of Rockford in a small town apartment. I would go there after I would meet, I'd sit there, I'd wait for a little while, like three or four hours, make sure everything was everything. And then I'd do a couple runs on my way out, clean myself off and then go home.

[Sean Ryan]

An SDR probably.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you just say that you had there was an element that was overwatching you for.

[Chris Bayless]

At times there were. In times of warrants, it's a lot of manpower to have that go on. When you do a long term infiltration type thing, you're tying up an overwatch crew or just guys in your group for, you know, now no one's doing anything except for this specific thing. And we were such a small agency, a lot of times you own only ended up with like one or two guys on your cover team, which ended up saving our life at one point. Talked about it later, but we didn't have a whole group. So you were kind of on your own to make sure that you were safe when you got out of there. And I would always do my due diligence to make sure I was, I was, I was wiped off and cleaned up before I, I went home.

[Sean Ryan]

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[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, it was actually one of the guys on one of Mel's friends. I ended up, I would take my kids to Odyssey Fun World early in the morning at 9 o' clock before all the came like 3 o', clock, 4 o' clock in the afternoon. Then it was crowded. You know it is. You try to keep an eye on everybody and you know you're looking at everyone. So I would go in the morning when no one was there and I remember one of Mel's guys was upstairs. I don't know if he was. I don't know if he had kids or he was with like a girlfriend's kids or something, but they were doing something and he had his cut on. And unfortunately my kids knew what henchmen, angels, outlaws, they knew all that stuff. So my son's bounding upstairs to go to this one. Game he always liked video game he'd like to play. And he's running up the stairs. I look up and I see this guy on the left side. And I'm like, ah, shit. And I would never let my daughter. We held hands and we played all the games together. She was never by herself. So she sees it at the same time I see it and she goes, hey, Dad. I go. And I gave her the, the no sign. And I'm like, zach. And he's like, you know, boys, Zach. He's running up, he's not listening, probably gets to the top of the stairs and then he kind of sees it. And he like turns around, his eyes are super big. So he leans up against like a pillar and. And he looks down at us and I give him the, like, let's go. And he can't let it go. So he like leans back against the wall and he goes. And I'm like, yeah. And then he's like, he comes out against the wall. Like he's joke, like, it's all good. Yeah. He walks down the steps, get his hand. I go, we gotta go. He goes, yeah. So we go out. I go, hey, dude, when I give you this, you just go, I don't need your sit rep on whatever the situation is at that point. I go, we're just, we're gonna frickin X fill right now. Get in a frickin car. We're out. And he's like, he's like, yeah, I know. He goes, are we afraid of that guy? I go, no, but you know what? He was up there with his kids and we wouldn't want anything to. We wouldn't want to argument or have a problem with his kids up there. And they were like, okay, okay, right? Like, okay. So that was the only time that.

[Sean Ryan]

That's it.

[Chris Bayless]

That was it.

[Sean Ryan]

Holy shit.

[Chris Bayless]

That's very.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Chris Bayless]

I tell you what, I look back at stuff and I am. It's like even coming to know the Lord and finding. Getting back into faith. I am extremely thankful for where I'm at now compared to where I was by the time I retired. It's. I'm very fortunate, very fortunate. I worked with some great guys that I know would save me in a minute. And yeah, I was very, very fortunate.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you have a plan for if that happened? I mean, how different was your cover story than your actual story?

[Chris Bayless]

I mean, obviously pretty close. I was. I mean, I can wrench on cars and stuff. I knew construction inside and out. I poured concrete to framed houses, worked with my dad. All the time. My dad was just jack of all trades. So it actually came in handy because it looked like you really were who you're purporting to be. I always had a set of tools in the truck. Yeah. So, like, when the brother's hot water tank went out, you know, I'm like, oh, shit, bro. I got you, man. I'll swap that out for you. You know, so having the. Having the ability to do that non criminal stuff, just. It helps your backstop story because now you become more real to these guys. Shit, he swapped out my hot water heater. You know, cop's gonna do that, you know, and then any preconceived myth about undercovers, you know, that would always come in and like, what? Like, well, if you're undercover and I'm a bad guy and I ask you, are you now or you ever been a police officer? You got to tell me, otherwise, it's entrapment. So that was like the big one. So a lot of those guys would say, are you now or have you ever been affiliated with law enforcement? You know, you'd be like, no. All right? Because if you were, you'd have to tell me. Otherwise, it's entrapment. So we help perpetuate that mystique. But I think everybody figured it out by now. But back in the day, that was one of the things so. So they would ask you, you know, questions and stuff like that. It was just like, yeah, I'm lying, but it's okay.

[Sean Ryan]

But it's okay. Wow. So how did the. Who did you go after first? Was it the.

[Chris Bayless]

I started with Childlike Outlaws. Yeah, I started the Outlaws case. And it wasn't an infiltration. I didn't. Those guys didn't know me more in a handshake, you know, and I wrote on the credibility of the. The informant. And so it was just the Juliet guys. And it was like just enough to get probable cause for a search warrant and get the guns and. And the dope that we had purchased, we used. And then we bought enough dope out of the clubhouse that we were able to seize it federally. Seize it, forfeit it. So we took the clubhouse. But it was that time that I met some of the guys. I. They didn't get wrapped up in that first case, but I met some of those guys that ended up getting it on with Mel and his crew from. At the time they were in Antioch, Illinois. And then they moved up to small town right at the border of Illinois and Wisconsin. And the state line chapter, they were called to the Outlaws. And they had moved up there. And so I had met some of those guys. I knew the. I met the President and again, just riding on the credibility. I didn't buy anything. I didn't talk to him about criminal activity. It was just kind of a meet and greet, you know, Spent a little time at the clubhouse in Antioch, but not very much, you know, and that was about it. Just getting seen, you know, you just can't run up on somebody and go, hey, got a machine gun, you know? Yeah, give me a bomb. You know, it doesn't work. So you got to build that, get that foundation set before you move forward.

[Sean Ryan]

What, what is it that. What's go criteria for the ask? I mean, how much time are you spending building their trust, hanging out with them? You know, what. What is in your head? What is go criteria for? All right, I'm good enough. I can make the ask.

[Chris Bayless]

Sometimes though, if they ask you a question, like, dude, what are you trying to come up? Are you trying to eat? What are you like, what are you looking to do? And it'd be like, oh, bro, you know, I got a plug over here for dope. I got this guy, but this guy's short. I don't know if you got a guy, you know? Yes, not you. I don't want to come to you for dope or guns, but if you got a guy that could hook me up, that'd be great. So a lot of times they're like, well, fuck, why give your money to that guy? You can deal with me directly. Oh, okay, great. Okay, I'll deal with you. So that's kind of the, you know, kind of the MO but it's a vibe, you know, you got to kind of feel it. You can tell how people act toward you, you know, when people don't like you. I'm sure you know that feeling. And so you get a. You get a good vibe for that. Have an understanding of how much to push and how much not to push. You know, how much to, like, kiss their ass for. Like, God, you guys are the best. And not be some suck ass. That's, you know, you know, got these guys up on some pedestal. You're trying to be like,

[Sean Ryan]

how much time are you spending studying biker gang culture?

[Chris Bayless]

Big. Got to do your homework. I did when I first started, we went through the academy and I. You saw the sizzle reel. I was like, no one will ever info. I'm like, fuck, come on, man. There's got to be a way, you know? Got to be a way to get in on these guys. And I knew that my predecessors, the guys that I admired in my organized crime group, they. They did some mob guys. So I'm like, I think every. If you find the right angle to come at them, everybody can get done. Every criminal can get. Be had at some point, if you work it the right way. Why did. Why did they say that?

[Sean Ryan]

I forgot. So when they. Can you just elaborate on that for the audience?

[Chris Bayless]

It's just hard. Like an enemy guy that said there was a mystique for the motorcycle gang stuff. It was when I did it in. When I did the. Mel's case, I think started in probably late. No. Yeah, late 92. Just doing the homework on the guys, like trying to figure out who's in the zoo and what was going on. And then it wasn't until probably mid 93 that I really started it full time. And then it extended to almost 95 until it just got too violent. And ATF said no more. But the workup on it was, you know, doing your homework, whether these guys were about. But we didn't know what it was going to take to become a member of any of that. You know, they have, you know, there was always these rituals, you know, I remember one girl told me, she goes, agent. Female agent. She goes, you know, it's kind of gross, but she goes, you know, you're gonna have to blow a dog. I go, what? What? She goes, yeah, to get in on these guys, you're gonna have to blow a dog. I go, are you fucking kidding me? She goes, that's what I heard. Like, what you heard or what? You know. And she's like, well, that's what. That's the rumor of how to get into this club. You're gonna have to do that. So I remember asking one of the henchmen up in Rockford, Monte Matias. I go, I gotta blow a dog or some to get in here. He goes, dude, where'd you hear that? And I'm like, I didn't want to say. A law enforcement professional told me that's what you got to get in. I was just like, nah, I just kind of. Somebody told me that one time. He goes, dude. He goes, if I told you to blow a dog and you did it, I would send you on down the highway. He goes, no, we want men, not dog blowers. I'm like, okay, good. All right. I think I can handle that. I'll be okay. So, yeah, so that was kind of. But, yeah, that's. We didn't know a friend of mine, that's a West Point grad that was also an agent. He was helicopter pilot, flew Cobras. Great guy. He had actually done a bike club called the Warlocks down in Florida. And he had met the president at the gym. This guy's West Point guy, just played football for a point. I mean, he's just solid, jacked up, cat. The president liked him right away because he was a big dude. And he basically said, come on in. I'm going to give you your own chapter. So he got himself and then like, four or five other ATF agents, they developed their own chapter of the Warlocks down there, got patches, and they didn't have to prospect or start out or earn their way. They kind of just got by virtue of the fact that this guy really liked the West Point guy. Steve Martin was a great undercover. He said, now we. We. You're okay. You're with us. They're like, we're going to get you guys going. So they started their own chapter and they did a bunch of those guys down there. But that was. That was the only guy I had to talk to. Great friend of mine. And I would compare notes, like, how did. Like, what are they asking you to do? Do you got to commit a murder? Do you got to do all this violent. He's like, I don't. For these guys down here, we got patched around. I don't know what it's like to start from scratch and move up. I'm like, all right, so do you

[Sean Ryan]

always start from scratch? Because, I mean, I guess starting from scratch, I don't want to come across like I'm trying to diminish anything, so please don't take it. But, you know, I mean, so I did some undercover work, most of it in the Middle East. And, you know, we would get these briefings on culture and all this shit. And of course, the briefings were always fucking gone off. So we'd get fired immediately. Yeah, I'd be like, I remember one time I walked this guy through an entire city and to clean him up, and he was. I had him walking through metal detectors and all this shit.

[Chris Bayless]

Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

We finally do the pickup after a couple hours, and he gets in the car and he's like, that woman at the hotel, that was. That was you guys, wasn't it? And that guy at the fucking mall, that was also you guys. And I'm like, how do you know all this shit? And he's like, well, guy had the knife on the wrong side. The woman had wearing her fucking burqa. The wrong way. That sash was on the. And I was just like, man, we are a fucking clown show.

[Chris Bayless]

We gotta go back.

[Sean Ryan]

So why they call the CIA the Clowns in Action?

[Chris Bayless]

Oh, that's funny.

[Sean Ryan]

But so, so, but so where I'm going with this is if you were starting from the beginning, if you're starting as a guy coming up who's just interested in the biker gangs, I guess maybe you don't have to know the culture because you'll learn it along the journey.

[Chris Bayless]

And so what. What you kind of want to do is, like, I see how you like. I like what I told, like, this guy Paul Jensen, that was one of the henchmen up in Rockford. I said, man, I see how you guys roll and how you guys act, man, I'd love to be a part of this, bro. I said, I. But, you know, I always. John Mazzola said, never play a badass, never play a tough guy. He goes, just play the chooch. Because you're a guy looking for answers, trying to figure it out. So I was like, okay. So I. I would tell Paul Jensen, I said, man, I love riding Harley's. I love club life. I think that's for me. And he's like, all right, man. He goes, if you're interested, he goes, you know, just start coming around. And I'm like, okay. And so he would give me to, like, the protocol of meeting somebody. Like, you shake your hand, you know, I'm Chris Rockford. Hang around, hang around, Rockford. You know, there's a way to meet these guys. Never touch the patch. Don't fight with the brothers. You're going to get a beat down, you know, that kind of thing. So there was like that protocol, the nuances of being in a club. And so he was, you know, he was very good about just, you know, kind of teaching me the ropes. The other ones, like, for the outlaws, before, I was just a friend of a guy that knew him. So again, they didn't know me farther than a handshake. So it was not that hard. But it wasn't an infiltration. And, you know, it's kind of funny, we always talk about, like, is it worth taking the time to infiltrate, or can you figure out a different way to get these guys? And a lot of times figuring out the other way is a lot safer and a lot expedient. You might not get the same bag for the buck, but you're taking off the head of the snake. So let's just do it this way. It's a little bit Easier. So infiltration always isn't there. Getting a patch, that's not the goal. The goal is to make the case. You know, at the end of the day, you don't say you got a patch, but nobody went to jail. You're wasting your time. So if you're working toward, you know, collecting evidence and buying dope and buying guns and showing their criminal activity, that's one thing. But if you're just doing it for the sake of doing it, it's not worth it. A lot of guys have done cases on bike gangs where they never became a member. They just were able to. To befriend these guys and some guys that say, why don't you, you know, why don't you put your toe in the water, man? Why don't you stay? Ah, I got my own thing going on. I'm okay. And they were able to go through and do quite a few people. So, you know, it's not always the infiltration that really gets it and wins the game at the end. Sometimes it's just being smart about the number of people you have, how much money ATF's gotta have, the time that's gonna be expended to do this. Is it worth it? And so a lot of times I did a better case that if you wanna talk about, we could talk about too, is a different bike gang, but they did a historical case for the Grim Reapers. They were a Midwest club I did right after the Henchmen Midwest club, about maybe 500 members, 400 members. They were in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. Kind of white supremacist kind of orientation. They had those ties with the Klan guys, that kind of thing. But they did a historical case on them where they went back and identified all the violent acts these guys had done. Bar beatings, a rape, home invasions, stealing motorcycles. They had really put together this historical case that was awesome. So when I got to the point where I was doing the undercover part and got introduced, all I had to do was get conversation about a lot of these acts that they had already proven up. And now I have bought in a small amount of dope from a guy. Well, that makes all the historical dope they could put on him good. So it made it a lot easier. And it's a way better way to do those kinds of organizations. So you got the historical case with all the components. And then I would go back now as a fresh face. I say, man, I heard you guys. That guy you dropped in the bar that night went out, flipped him off, and stole his hardy. I go bad. I was equal. Yeah, we beat his ass. Fuck, he was unconscious. We went out and then we stripped it down, you know, the triple tree and the rest of the parts went in the river. And then we sold everything to the Outlaws and Joliet. They were aligned with the Outlaws and Joliet River. So you get that conversation now. And it makes all that historical case that they've done that you may have shitty witnesses about. It makes it really good, because now you got that actual confession and evidence about that crime.

[Sean Ryan]

You've stroked a lot of egos.

[Chris Bayless]

I've told a lot of guys, man, you're the shit. Yeah. So that's what it's about. But you don't want to be a punk either, because then they don't want you around. So there's that balance of, like, man, I respect how you take care of business. You have to do it in a. Like a macho. Not macho, but kind of a manly kind of man. I respect what you guys do, man. You know, I respect how you guys handled that, man.

[Sean Ryan]

Embedding is a hell of a lot more complicated than just being undercover for a couple of days.

[Chris Bayless]

It's weird, you know, it's weird, but it's also. It's like. It's like being on a wrestling or the boxing team. You know, you're on a team, but it's up to you individually to go out and freaking whip a game and put these guys in jail. And so it's like you got a whole team around you, but it's up to you. You're kind of a solo act. It wasn't until, like, probably 2000, where we started working together in groups. We'd have three UCs going, doing a deal, and, man, that was like. I was like, this is awesome.

[Sean Ryan]

Now, you like that better than being on your own.

[Chris Bayless]

I liked being on my own because then I had only myself to be responsible for. But when you got guys that are of such a high caliber, and I watched them, how they work, and the stuff that would come out of their mouth and how they knew where I was thinking, and we would play off each other all the. It's just. It's like an orchestra, man. I mean, I'd be saying one thing, and this guy would help bolster it by saying something stupid, you know, it just was that ebb and flow of these guys and their. Their ability to really, really talk to people and. And get information out of them. And it was. Man, it was fun. And not only that, your security is A lot better too. Now you got a guy, you don't have to turn around, you know, you can, you know, I know there's a guy. Scummy neck.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on. How often would you be having to report back or check in or be affiliated with ATF when you're embedded?

[Chris Bayless]

Every day.

[Sean Ryan]

Every day.

[Chris Bayless]

Every day. What I would do for the Henchman case, I'd get up, man, I was up out of the house by like 4am I would go to the office, get the report stuff handled. I would sit down with the secretary, I'd give her, this is what happened last night. These are recordings I have. She would take care of putting that stuff or I would put it in evidence, but she would document the evidence sheet, put it in, we'd write a quick brief, we'd do a report. And then by 9:00, I was back in the mix. I would be back with those guys doing stuff. I always played it where I lived, a distance away. That gave me time if there was something that I needed to either get more people, something bad had happened, or just bad guys are lazy by nature. They're not going to want to make a trip all the way, 40 minutes to, you know, come check me or stop by for a beer or something like that. So the times, even being embedded, I was able to remove myself to the point where you could live a little bit of life. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. With the henchmen, I didn't know enough. By the time I had joined the Grim Reapers, which was kind of interesting. We faked a, to get in, back up a little bit to get an informant to get into the Grim Reapers. They arrested a guy, a three time convicted felon, a guy named Crazy. So they arrest Crazy for having a pistol on his pants. Well, the club brothers did not put any money on his books. And he sat in the federal lockup for three months with nothing. So at that three month point, he called up atf, he said, I want to cooperate. Like I'm looking at a lot of years. He goes, I want to do the right thing. So they went out and interviewed him. So the bikers know that if you're in jail and you're looking at 15 years and there's no bond, there's no way, if you all sudden, oh, this miraculous thing happened and now I'm out and, and I'm back, you know, bring me back to the club, they're not going to buy it and they're going to kind of kick you to the curb. So we had to do something that they thought this goes to the street theater part. They thought something that they were watching was really happening, and in reality, it wasn't. So they made a deal with Crazy and Crazy's attorney. We got approval from DOJ to do it, and they said, look, we'll dismiss the charges on you for now with prejudice, but you're going to have to introduce a guy. You're going to have to give us all the historical stuff on the grim reapers that, you know, all the drug dealing, all the stuff you've done. You know, you got to be completely honest about it. And if it works out and we're able to secure convictions at the end of this and you do your part of it, then we will re indict you maybe for a lesser charge, you know, and that's kind of the ebb and flow of the criminal justice system. If you cooperate, then you get some kind of benefit for it. So we didn't want to go into court. We're going to have to go into court and dismiss the charges. So he had a court date, and all the brothers came in to see what was going on. So the judge and the attorney knew, and it was already. Yeah, we were just basically going to drop the case. So the case agent and the U.S. attorney start getting in an argument, fake argument. And the U.S. attorney looks at the case agent. He goes, well, I'm going to have to dismiss all the charges. He goes, you. So he goes, up, judge, because government, you know, right now we're going to withdraw with prejudice charges against Mr. I forget whatever his name was. And then judge is like, defense counsel got anything? They're like, nope, we're all good. He's there, bangs a gavel, and he goes, case dismissed. So the U.S. attorney walks around, and now he's tearing into the agent. Fake, of course. So all the guys in the gallery see this going on. Holy shit. So when crazy comes out, they're like, like, great. This is awesome. So about a month later, he introduces me as his nephew, and now I'm off to the races.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow. That. So the attorneys, the. Everybody could be in on it.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah. It was, like, illegal. There was nothing wrong with it. It was just that they got in this fake argument in the middle of the courtroom. You know, the judge was like. The judge was like, okay with it. He was like, fine. And again, this isn't like this with the government. Does not happen in a vacuum. You got to run that shit up the chain, you know? And everybody's like, yeah, there's no problem. You're Just dismissing a case with prejudice. No big deal. You were going to do that anyway. First cooperation, so you're good. So that's what. That's what we did. And then I got introduced. And then for the next 15 months after I got done with the Mel stuff, when they said no more of that, I rolled into that and then became a hangaround and a prospect. And then, you know, we didn't plan on that to begin with. They were like, do you think you could get on these guys? I go, I think I'm okay. I went out and I bought, like, a stolen Harley off the president of the Iowa chapter. Like, first night out, loaded it in the back of my pickup truck, and I go, I think I'm okay. And they were like, all right, man, let's go. So I was like, back in it again.

[Sean Ryan]

So, I mean, the reason I was asking how often you have to check in is, I mean, how many guys have you seen? Or maybe none. But how many guys lose themselves when they're embedded in a. The Italian mob and the biker gangs and the. And the, you know, inner city gangs?

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, it's a little bit.

[Sean Ryan]

I think, because it's an attractive lifestyle. It's exciting. There's women, there's drugs, there's booze, there's fights. Like, yeah, anybody that's, I don't know, got a little testosterone, real, man, that shit's attractive. There's a lot of power, a lot of ego, a lot of women, a lot of, like. It's just a.

[Chris Bayless]

It's true.

[Sean Ryan]

You're doing gangster.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah. And some of the guys, you actually. You're like, I like that guy. Like, if that guy wasn't a criminal right now, we'd probably be friends. Because he's actually a personable guy. His choices in life, though, he's gone to the left here, and he's doing what he's doing. So, yeah, so you had that. And I think that's just the nature of. You try to look for the best in people. I mean, sometimes. I mean, the way I was brought up, you know, everybody gets. You know, you just kind of look for the best in people. You know, you try some way to communicate with them or get on their level. And it's just that interpersonal communication stuff that lends itself to having feelings for or losing yourself. We've had guys. We had one guy that. It's his story to tell, and I won't tell it, but, yeah, he had a problem, as he's doing. He goes, I like these guys more than I like my agents in my office, and, well, that's a problem. I remember talking to him, and I'm like, bro, what do you. You wear a white hat. That's a black hat. I go, there's a lot of gray area in between, but at the end of the day, you're the police. And he was having a. He was struggled. He goes, yeah, but these guys are about brotherhood and this stuff. I go, if these guys know who you are, they will kill you. I said, if they had the opportunity to slit your throat right now, they would kill you. Where's the brotherhood in that? He's like, whoa. So, yeah, a lot of guys do. They have. They have an issue or they run into problems with it.

[Sean Ryan]

Have you ever had that issue?

[Chris Bayless]

I was pretty much new where I was at. There were guys I liked. I felt bad, like when Monty Matthias got murdered by the outlaws up there. When we were at his funeral, I was actually. I had a guard in a clubhouse at the time, but I felt. I felt bad. I was angry. I was mad. You know, I'll put money in jail for the stuff he was doing. But, man, you know, he. He believed my story, you know, and he was always looking out. He always looked out. You know, he goes, man, you guys aren't paying enough attention. They're trying to get us. You know, he would tell the informant myself, man, are you checking your shit for bombs? Are you strapped? Every fucking day, you come out of the house, you need to move closer. Because we were. Like I said, we were way, you know, 35, 40 minutes away. He goes, you should probably move closer in town. We have a problem. We need everybody together. You know, I'm like, I will think about it. But, yeah, so it's like, a guy like that, he's looking out for me, but he's looking out for me because he believes I'm a fricking criminal. He's not looking out for me because he loves Chris Bayless. You know what I mean? So there's that. You got to kind of figure that. That component of it out, and it's hard. A lot of people struggle with that, I would imagine.

[Sean Ryan]

I would imagine. I mean. I mean, I would imagine that depending on how much time you're spending with these guys, and you get attached to them. And, I mean, I've seen lots of, say, case officers get attached to fucking assets, and it's old as time wreck when they get killed.

[Chris Bayless]

And.

[Sean Ryan]

But anyways. But you're. You're in a. You are in a brotherhood. You're In a. You're in a full blown criminal operation and I would imagine you like a lot of these, or maybe like some of these people. I would imagine the lifestyle is at least interesting to you.

[Chris Bayless]

There's no doubt. It's crazy. I mean, it's. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

And so with that comes maybe a shift in values. I mean, anywhere you. I joined the SEAL teams, I got all kinds of fucking bad habits from the SEAL teams. Bar fighting, womanizing, boozing, all that shit,

[Chris Bayless]

you know what I mean?

[Sean Ryan]

And it became a part of who I. It became a part of who I am for a long time.

[Chris Bayless]

Sure.

[Sean Ryan]

Until I was able to kick that shit.

[Chris Bayless]

You know what I think is there? A guy told me one time I was looking at when I retired, I thought maybe I talked to a guy that was in defense intelligence and he was like, we were just, just talking about undercover work, being in different places doing stuff. And I was like, man, you guys, that'd be a fun gig. You know, where you guys are at and the stuff you guys are doing. And he's like, yeah. He goes, if you have a sliding scale of morality sometimes. And I was like, it's. I get it. I was like, you're right. You know, we have that, those morals, those things we were brought up with. But now I gotta be with guys and act like this is something. I love the fact that you're beating the snot out of your girlfriend. I love the fact her. You know, what does she know she disrespected you? It. You got to give her a knot in the head, you know, it's that kind of like, I don't believe that, but yet I'm telling my brother. Right on. We had a guy, Paul Jensen, had he. He had like a little pal, used to like a. To whip his girlfriends and so he had this little whip. So my now wife at the time was an agent also. And she was my under. She was my girlfriend, played my girlfriend. And like we're talking outside, she's a terrible undercover agent. She's like the worst. I was like, you are like. She's like, I know, I know, just shut up. And I'm like, okay. So we had gotten this script and I told her this is. I go, they are going to get you into the old lady are going to get you in a room, they're going to ask you some questions. It's not like, oh, hey, welcome, you know, the butt cake's over here and get a cup of coffee and everything. I go, they're going to go in, they're going to ask you some shit. She's like, all right. So I come up with this script. We practiced it for like six weeks or a month. Just every day I'm asking her questions. So I get to the clubhouse and they're like, because they're kind of like, why are you not with some chick? There's a million hookers and a million strippers that everybody here is banging. Why are you not participating? I was like, well, I got this chick, she's a good earner, you know, takes care of my, you know. And they're like, well, you know, we never see her. Like, all right. So I talked her into like, okay, just, I just need cameo appearances on some runs and some. She's like, all right, I'll do it. So we get the script down. First time we're at the clubhouse, there's like three, maybe four of the guys, old ladies, girlfriends that are there. So I walk in, make the introductions and everything, and the girls are like, tina, good, come with us. They go upstairs in the clubhouse. She's up there like hour and a half, you know, close to two hours. And I'm like, outside. And I'm like, fuck. You know, sitting in the. We had a fenced in area where all the bikes are parked. We're out there just having a beer and I see her come back out around the corner. And I could see she's got like a little bit of a tear in her eye. And so the brothers were kind of walking around a different way. So I had a one on one sex with her. Like I looked at her like, are we cool? And she goes, I don't think they believe me. And I'm like, okay. I said, all right. I go, go stand over by the bike. So I'm kind of trying to catch the vibe because these guys can be telling you, hey, everything's great. And then, you know, and I was like, check the vibe. So she was kind of standing outside. I used to get some of the out of saddlebag or make like you're around over there. So she's at the bike doing something. So I go back inside and two of the old ladies there. And I was like, I go, I go, hey, we're getting ready to run, you know, see you guys later on or something. And they were like, we really like her. I'm like, are you sure? Because I'm thinking about dumping her. And they're like, no, we. I go, guys, seriously. I go, this is like a fricking today thing. I go, I don't. They're like, nah, she's. We like her. I go, are you sure? Because if you don't just tell me. Because I'm thinking about dumping her anyway. And they're like, no, we kind of like her. I'm like, okay. So I go back outside, we get on the bike, go back to the end of car. I go, I guess you did okay. And she's like, they were asking me about this. They were asking me about that. Their shit that you gave me. They were asking about. You didn't give me that shit to tell them. She goes, I had to make it up. I said, well, hopefully you did a good job. What lies did you tell them so that we can mark down so you and I are together on our lives? And she's like, all right, fine. So we're at the undercover part. We had to go back and redo. Like, not redo, but just. Okay, exactly. What did you say? Exactly? You know, it was about her background. Where are you from? You know, where do you work now? What's your phone number? How long have you known Chris? How long have you guys been dating? You know, your boots look really fucking new. You know, like, all of a sudden, she's a biker chick. You know, where you've got these worn girls that have got some stuff that's got some road miles on it. And Tina shows up in all new shit with the price tag still on it. You know, I was like, that's not gonna fly. So. But she did fine on that part was great. The other problem was, a couple months later, Paul's got that paddle that he liked to whip his girls with this little paddle. And Tina was standing in front of me. And Paul goes, give Tina a little whack on the ass. And I'm like, so she's talking to another old lady. So I kind of go forward. I gave her, like, a shot on the butt with this little leather whip thing with a paddle on it. Well, she spins around, man, and bam. And she blasts me right in the chest. And then she realizes, I shouldn't have done that. And I look at her and I hear Paul Jensen go, you should get your cut in line. And I'm like, right on, bro. So I grab her by the air, and I walk over to the side of the clubhouse. I go, sweetie, you can't punch me in front of these guys. I go, it's not good. It makes me look bad. I am so, so sorry. I go, okay. I go, I gotta put you on timeout, man. I go, go back and sit on the bike with your arms folded, pouting, and just sit there. And she's like, okay. So she goes back, sits on the bike. So we go in with the rest of the guys. I'm having a beer at the thing. So I'm looking around, and they don't. Nobody says anything. You know, they're just like, you had to take care of your. The way you had to take care of your. So after a while, I look at my wife, I go, you know what, fellas? I go, I think timeout's over, man. I'm gonna go home. I go, I'll catch you guys later tonight. They're like, right on, brother. So I left. I went outside. I was like, baby, you cannot freaking do that. She goes, I know, I know. But she cannot play that subservient female biker role, you know, I wanted to tell her, I go start washing a bike or start wiping the gas tank off it. I didn't want to. I said, figure time out. Just sitting in time out on the back of the scoot would be enough to. That was her patents for the day. But, yeah, but she did. We were practicing getting because we knew the outlaws were trying to get us. So I had a.45 that I carried in my back. Back of my pants. And we're on the bike. She would practice coming out of my pants. If we had to engage while we were riding, which we almost had to at one point. So I. I thought we were all prepared. I thought I was like, I got this. I'm in the middle of a biker war. I know what some of these guys look like. I gunned up. I got guns over here. I got guns in my pants. I go, I'm on it, man. Somebody steps to me, I'm gonna crush them. I had no idea how much Dallas knew about where we were at, what we were doing. Times they had surveilled us, times they tried to kill us were. I was oblivious to it until later when I talked to the case agent, Sandy Devulcaneer, who did the RICO on him out of Wisconsin. I was up interviewing these guys, and they're like, yeah, remember you? And I was like, So I thought I was, man. I thought I was, man. Look at me. I'm. That. That. The realization of that freaking. It's one of those to your knees experience where you're like, you know what I need to reassess. Who else knows what the I'm doing, like, how I think of myself and I gotta. I gotta be better. And so, yeah, you just. You try to Be better.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Why'd you almost kill somebody on your bike?

[Chris Bayless]

Well, actually, the allies almost killed us. We had two cover or one cover team guy. And we were doing a run. You know, you go out, go to bar to bar, you know, so that the henchmen and we had some out of town angels were there. So we're all lined up, getting ready to go. And the outlaws, we found this out later because the outlaw that killed Monte Matias, I interviewed him, he cooperated and gave everything up. When I interviewed him, he talked about, I asked him about, were you guys in a van one night driving by our pack? And he goes, yeah. He goes, we had a couple ARs, shotguns and pistols, and we were going to slide the slider over of the van. And he goes, and as your bikes were going this way, we were coming south, you guys headed out of the clubhouse. I go, right. He goes, yeah. He goes, we were just going to and just open up on everybody down the line. And I was like, okay, okay. And the reason I knew that was our cover team guy spotted and knew who the president was, that guy's bike that was driving the van. And so we. We knew they were. We thought they were just following us. I had no idea they were gunned up, ready to freaking unload and kill all of us. And so I'm thinking to myself at that point, like, it wouldn't have mattered If Tina got that. 45 out of the back of my pants. We were going to eat it. There was no way we were going to be able to survive that. And it's one of those. Where had they saw our surveillance guy, Our surveillance guy saw them. They didn't know if the surveillance guy was one of our guys following a pack that was gunned up, ready to go, or if it was law enforcement that was following the pack. So they called it off and they left. So it was one of those many times where I look back now and I'm like, it's so fortunate to not be. Not be injured or hurt. Damn.

[Sean Ryan]

How long were you guys undercover together?

[Chris Bayless]

Fifteen months, I think. Shit, about a year and a half.

[Sean Ryan]

And these guys were all sharing women.

[Chris Bayless]

They would. But you had the right to. You had the choice for. I mean, if your lady wants to go sleep with so and so, no problem. The angels were more. They're a little bit different in the. In that regard. The grim reapers. I would never bring a girl to grim reapers. They told me flat out, first chick you bring here, we're fucking her. Like, all right, right on. Good to know. So I had no girlfriend during the year and a half on the Grim Reapers, but at that point, I knew how to play it. Like I said, they had done a historical case, so I didn't have to push to get a lot of guns or everything. I just had to get a lot of conversation for the rico. And that's what. That's what made that case. We ended up with 50 defendants in five states. I think we seized. We seized three clubhouses. Under that. We were able to show, historically, they had purchased 250 keys from the cocaine from the Joliet outlaws that went to them. So we had that drug conspiracy locked down. We could show that they had stolen over a million dollars in Harley Davidson motorcycles over the course of just 12 months. So these guys were. I mean, they were out there doing bad things. And so we were able to do that through the RICO. I think we charged 17 guys on the RICO, and the other 38 defendants went on single. Like, I bought dope or single gun buys or something along those. That and whatever they got caught with during the. During the search warrants that we did on their houses.

[Sean Ryan]

Bam. So did you ever have anybody that tried to. Your partner?

[Chris Bayless]

My partner that I'm married to?

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, you're.

[Chris Bayless]

Well, well, there were guys that were, like, very married, very interested, and like, hey, man, you guys. How do you guys get down? We don't get down like that. That. I go, I'm a sole proprietor, bro. I like. I like my stuff.

[Sean Ryan]

And they're good with that?

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, they were fine. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, Chris, let's take a break.

[Chris Bayless]

Let's do it.

[Sean Ryan]

And when we come back, we'll talk about infiltrating the Hell's Angels.

[Chris Bayless]

Certainly.

[Sean Ryan]

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[Chris Bayless]

Right. It was kind of an independent operator. What we always knew there was a case where two Hell's Henchmen, at the time was Hunt's henchmen. When we started, they didn't get their rolling. Their patch to Hell's angel was later on. Two Hell's Henchmen had actually, they were. We knew they were into a lot of different things. Mel had got locked up on by the FBI for a minute on a car give up, mail fraud. We had information they were, you know, dealing drugs and all about guns. We also had information in a separate case where two of Mel's guys had done a murder or attempted to kill one of their attorneys that represented him. He hated his wife and didn't want to get divorced, so he thought it'd be a better idea to put a bomb on her car and blow her up. So two of Mel's guys went out and actually put a bomb on her vehicle. It went off. She got injured, but she wasn't killed. But these guys was interesting criminal masterminds that they were. You got two biker guys. They're in a northwest suburb. She was taking the train into the city. And so she was in, like, a parking area where you get the train. There's coffee shops there. Well, these guys sat around looking suspicious when they put the bomb on. And every suburbanite's looking at these two biker guys like they were very recognizable. Obviously, they didn't read that book, left a bang where you look for anomalies. You know, they missed that part. So they put the bomb on she, puts it in reverse, backs up, it detonates. She's not killed. And so we knew that from a protection or from a standpoint of why would we look at these guys? They were into a lot of different stuff. And so that was the pretext for starting the investigation. I knew from an undercover standpoint, there's no way I could do these guys in Chicago because, again, I knew who Mel was. And I knew. We knew. We just grew up in the same area that was. It was not going to take very long to get found out. So, fortunately, a local police officer and a DeKalb county sergeant had developed a CI guy nicknamed Grub. And he said, this guy wants to cooperate. Thinks he could, you know, do a case on the Rockford Angels. I was. Or Hell's Henchmen. I'm like, all right. So I met him, and he's like, we got our story kind of down straight. And we knew right away that, you know, the. I didn't know exactly what we'd have to do to get in. And the intent really wasn't to get in and become a member. It was more just to see if we could perfect a case on the information we could gather just by being around those guys. But it looked like it was moving toward, like, an infiltration kind of thing as we started to go. So it became like, okay, well, we can keep going on this, then. Let's see how far we can go and get into the internal workings of the club that we wouldn't get if we were just on the outside, superficially. So as we started hanging around, we. We backstopped ourselves with. The CI was actually a counselor for drug addiction. And so they knew he didn't use or drank. And so it helped me with the drug component because I said I was with this guy, part of his. I was in his program. And that's how we became friends. He knew my dad, blah, blah, blah. So he had a pretty solid story. He was a contractor and was a builder. So I would go to construction jobs with him during the day, in and around where we knew some of these guys would be. They'd drive by, they would see us. Or as we started to hang around or go to the clubhouse or meet them in bars, they're like, what are you guys doing? Well, we're building a house over here. So, you know, they would drive by and they'd see us. And so it added to the credibility of who we were. So that's kind of how we. From a foundational standpoint, we started it off and started going forward from there.

[Sean Ryan]

So your whole plan was just be seen first without.

[Chris Bayless]

Just be seen and see where we can go. You know, it's one of those things you're not going to know unless you try it. What we were able to do very early on was the henchmen had a. One of the members from Chicago had a storage unit, and we had gotten. We'd heard peripherally stuff just talking about guns. And I was like, yeah, we Gotta, you know, we got. We got guns, we're ready to go if we have a problem anywhere. We got them stashed, we got them stored. And. And some of the guys I worked with in the auto theft task force said, hey man, we think we got enough probable cause to get into this storage unit. It's owned by a Hell's Henchman. They said, he's got like an arsenal in there. And I go, well, do you guys got enough PC to get in without anything we're doing? And they're like, all right, let's talk to the state's attorney and see. So they talked to the state's attorney. They didn't need any of our stuff, any information we had. So they were able to get what's called a John Doe warrant, which is basically, you're not going to know who was the affiant and gave the probable cause for the warrant until you actually go to court that it's revealed. So it kind of kept their informant safe for a little while while they. They did this, did a search warrant. So when they got in, I went up and I was clouded all up. And I was sitting in the back of squad just to see what they would get out of it. And I think we got 150 firearms, 15 machine guns, 10 silencers, hand grenades, 32,000 rounds of ammunition, all assortment, 5, 5, 6, 9, 45, a lot of black powder. What else did we get? I mean, it was just. It was like their arsenal, nice little arsenal. So we were able to take that. So we were able to get that like very early. Like maybe the first six weeks, seven weeks that we were doing it, it came really quick. So for etf, that was a. All right, that's. That's kind of a win. That's a good stash. The. They were all Mac 10 machine pistols that they had. They were converted. Great job. The guns were oiled up and they were wrapped in cellophane. They had 200 rounds, and they were all in, like a little pelican case. So you had the silencer, the Mac 10, 200 rounds of ammo. So you could just grab it, go. If you were going to go do something, take care of it, and then either get rid of it or bring it back, whatever you wanted to do. But it was all. It was pretty much, it was ready to go. You know, you come by, you grab it, you go take care of business. So for us, that was like, wow. We kind of hit it pretty good right off the bat. And then it was like, well, let's see what more we can get, more information, we can get more stuff that they're doing. And as we started getting into it, you know, the guys that were dealing dope out of there, we pretty much identified those guys pretty quick. And then we got word that they were going to roll their patch to hell, become prospects for the Hells Angels. And the dynamic completely changed. You had guys that, you had 26 members. I think maybe up in Rockford. A lot of those guys knew this was not going to end well, that when we make this step and get this Hells angel patch, we're going to have a problem with the Outlaws. They knew it. So a lot of the guys quit.

[Sean Ryan]

Are you a part of all these conversations? Are you in the club?

[Chris Bayless]

I'm not in the. I'm in the club, but I'm. I'm learning the ways of the force, if you will, through one of the members that kind of Paul Jensen. That Paul Jensen eventually stabbed a guy to death and died in the penitentiary. But Paul was my guy that like he was helping me along. So even though I wasn't supposed to be party to meetings and stuff, you know, I'd ask him, I said, brother, what's going on, man? I gotta know, you know, I mean, I. I got a business, you know, I'm still trying to eat, want to be with you guys. Should I gun up all the time? He goes, you better gun up every freaking day, man. I'm like, okay, all right, enough said. And then he would just give me tips and clues as to like, hey, they're coming in. A bunch of guys are going to quit. They rolled their up, they left it on the pool table and they're not, they're not going to be a part of the club anymore. And so I think they were down to like maybe eight guys actually were the remaining crew of Rockford from about 26. So a lot of those guys said, yeah, you know, we're about knuckling and you know, being crazy bikers, but we're not down for what's going to happen. And they, they knew, they knew that it was going to be bad. And so that's when I think it helped us a bit. I think I mentioned before that because they were so focused on doing the right thing by the Hells and Angels and Angels would come in and give them called abdig on the job training, you know, coming in. This is what we expect from you guys. This is what we want to see from you guys. Here's how you handle it. It was more like Platitudes of when you met somebody. You know, this is how we want to be respected. This is how we want to be seen in the community. The henchmen were, like, into themselves, didn't talk to anybody outside the bike club. The Angels are like, no way, man. He goes, you got it? It's a public relations thing. He goes, you want people in the community to say, yeah, that guy's not a bad guy. They take care of their neighborhood, the clubhouse. They help us out. They're good guys. Because, you know, at the end of the day, we might be in court, we might be, you know, you might have these guys sitting on a jury. And we want those jury pool from that area to say, you know what? Those guys aren't really that bad. So it was kind of a PR kind of thing. So we started having what was called Tuesday night runs. And it was where they just invite people in that were just writers, just regular citizens, they called them. They'd make a little money by selling drinks at the bar, and then we'd have a poker run. You know, you go out, go bar to bar. It was a way to kind of get people interested. Maybe they got, you know, a couple of guys we want that look like they'd be hardcore guys that could come with us and maybe kind of groom those guys and see if they'd be around. So it was kind of like kind of an open house kind of thing for the biker world. So a lot of people would show up. One of the people we that showed up initially was a club called arm, association of Recovered Motorcyclists. It was supposed to be a sober club. No drugs, no alcohol, just living the biker lifestyle, you know, live free or die. Kind of kind of thought process. So those guys come in. What we did know was those guys were aligned with the Outlaws. And so when they came in, all they were doing was taking notes and gathering intel then to give to the Outlaws up in Janesville, Wisconsin. That ended up the bombings. They picked out the targets and that kind of thing. So I remember the president coming up to me, you know, he put his arm around me and he's like, so you're throwing your hat in here, huh? I said, yeah, right on. You know, he goes, yeah, it's a good. This is a good group, man. You're going to be just fine hanging out with these guys. And now this motherfucker went, told the Outlaws where everybody lived, you know, and they came back and they used his information against everybody in the club. Shit, yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

What did you think of the lifestyle,

[Chris Bayless]

you know, those guys you enjoying was pretty. I'm not gonna lie, there's an adrenaline rush you get doing, like I said, like on that sizzle reel, man, when you're in a pack of, you know, 20 or 30 guys, you're rolling down the highway, you see that angel patch and the henchman patch, you're like, nobody's gonna with us. And if they do, it's gonna be on. It's like that, that level, that thought of invincibility, if you will, that I'm riding with some guys that are gonna get after it. And so there was. There's like, there's an allure to that. Like he's talked about, man. If you got a little bit of testosterone and some gumption, it's like, man, this is kind of we're badass. And it was kind of that mentality that, that those guys had. And some of them were very badass, extremely badass, and some of them weren't.

[Sean Ryan]

What do you mean by that?

[Chris Bayless]

Well, there's guys that would get down, get down, like they call it on the street. Like, there's guys that get down. But you want a guy that gets down, get down, like a guy that will take it. A guy that's going to murder somebody, like Paul Jensen stabbing a guy outside the bar. Paul was a guy that would get down, get down. But you had other guys. Maybe they sell dope, but they're still in a club. But they weren't, you know, they're down for the cause. Because at the end of the day, if we all decide we're against the Outlaws, then everybody's in. There's no, like, well, you know what? I'm going to take this day off. No, we're at war with the Outlaws. You're going to go out, you see an outlaw, you're going to kill them. It was the same way for the allies. And if you didn't do that, you're going to get your ass beat or worse, and you're going to get tossed out of the club. So that's. You're in for a penny, in for a pound. And that helps us with the rico, because there's part of the RICO when we identify the enterprise. It's called the Pinkerton Rule. Pickerington Rule basically says actions and statements of one co conspirator are the actions and statements of all. So if you and your crew and I, we decide we're going to deal dope and we're at war with this other drug faction and one of our Guys out of the crew. We had the agreement. That's what you did is the agreement to do something. So, and that's the conspiracy component. As soon as we agree to do that, then if you went out and got popped off with 50 bricks, it could come back and we could all get charged with that same drug amount. If you decide I need to kill a rival drug dealer and we've all agreed at some point we're going to have to kill a rival drug dealer and you do it, we all get hung with that. So it's kind of a. And that's a very simplistic way to do it. It's a little more nuanced when you get into court. But ultimately that's basically it in a nutshell. And that's why RICO is such a valuable tool. It's because you get a lot of guys at the top that'll order something and the underling will go do it. We all have the agreement that we need to go kill this guy. We send a guy out to go kill him. Generally that guy, if he gets caught, will just get charged independently of that murder. But what RICO allows us to do is to go back then and take the entire enterprise down because those are the actions and furtherance of the enterprise these guys are doing. And so it's like a mosaic of criminal activity. You know, you've got a lot of little incidents, but they paint a large picture of the totality of the criminal actions of a particular group. And so that's what RICO does and that's how we use it. But it's not something that's in a bubble. Rico's just don't like, hey, I'm going to put a RICO and we're going to charge it tomorrow. There's levels of review that go through that because it's such a great tool, they don't want it to ever be, you know, we don't want or any, any bad case law or anything bad said about it. So to do a rico, you've got a. It's called a process memo, prosecutional memo. And it starts at the first level. Prosecutor goes up to his boss crim, chief U.S. attorney. And then for RICO, that goes off to OEO, Office of Enforcement OPERA or Office of Import Opera. I forget, man. Enforcement operations. That's what it is. They have a RICO team up there of attorneys. They review it to make sure you've got everything right. And then it goes back and you got the okay, okay to do it. So it's, it's kind of Voluminous takes some time to put. It takes a lot of time to put together, but it's, it's well worth it because you get to just bring in a ton of criminal activity that you wouldn't necessarily be able to do in a normal case.

[Sean Ryan]

Roger that. What are you partaking in? Are you selling? Are you selling drugs? Are you selling guns? Are you sleeping around? Are you using drugs?

[Chris Bayless]

I. We did heavy drinking. We did some street theater with Paul Jensen. And once I did it with, with Paul, hired him to watch something and gave him some money and then left it alone and didn't say anything about it. He goes, so you gotta. He goes, you got a bad self and a not so bad self, huh? And I go, well, you know how it is. You gotta eat, you know. I wouldn't say anything about what it was about, but he knew that obviously it was something, so he would vouch for me. Then for the most part, you know, for the rest of the time, like I said, there was other guys in there that were like, something about, dude, you know, something ain't right with them and you're never going to win those guys over. You just got to figure out a way around them. So I would do that. And then, like I said, I did enough in front of Paul. And at that time, again, they were so focused on being. Getting that patch, that Hell's angel patch and rolling it over and not that up and having the angel say, no, we don't want you guys. They were so focused on that they pretty much weren't paying attention to what we were doing or not doing. The fact that we were there in and of itself was enough to those guys. All right, you know, we'll let you guys come along.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah. So we were. Are you.

[Sean Ryan]

Are you partying? Are you.

[Chris Bayless]

I mean. Oh, yeah. We were at the clubhouse tending bar. I do security during the meetings. You know, I got a two way radio.

[Sean Ryan]

Drugs.

[Chris Bayless]

I didn't do any. I didn't have to do any. Yeah. I told him in the beginning there was one guy, that one guy that would constantly push me Al. He said, brother, I just can't trust you to. Unless you. I go, bro, I go, I already told you, man, I've been down this road, bro. I go, if you want me to be like Dennis, which was another guy that was just drunk all the time. He asked. He'd come in the clubhouse and say, I'm financially embarrassed because he was just freaking broke. I said, if you want Dennis. I go, then put that in my nose and you know what? I'll be Dennis. But right now, I got a thousand dollars in my pocket. So do you want to earn her? You want a guy that's going to make money and make us look good as a club, or do you want a drunk at the end of the bar? I go, choice is yours, bro. And he was like, oh, no, man. I'm just saying. I go, bro, I just. I can't. So that's where I'm at. I go, if I got to do that to be with you guys, I can't be with you guys. They were like, okay, they bought that. They did.

[Sean Ryan]

That's surprising.

[Chris Bayless]

It is. I think they'd like the fact that we had a business. And I think some of the guys looked at is if you have a legit chip business like Mel had, you know, Mel worked for companies, you know, where he was. No show, you know, but he got a paycheck and he got insurance. And it was just companies that I think in, you know, his ability to use those proceeds, you know, drug proceeds, and then pay that company for his healthcare and stuff like that. So they looked at our having a business, what they thought was a legitimate business, and the CI did have. The informant had a legitimate business. They kind of looked at that as probably a plus on sub level. We'll be able to leverage that, you know, at the end of this when we get our full patch. So they. They kind of looked at us like that, where. Yeah, okay. And then we. You know, there were times in bars where somebody had mouthed off or something, you know, and then they're like, hey, man, step to that guy and tell him what time of day it is. You know, Right on, bro. So I go, step to the guy and I would tell him, basically, brother, I said, man, you don't want how this is going to go. I go, it's not me. I go, it's them. And you know it. And he'd be like, most of the time, those guys would just say, okay, you know, and they. They walk away. But I think they wanted me to go up and slug him in the face. I come back and they're like, why didn't you knock that guy out? And I was like, well, first of all, I'm a little dude, and that was a pretty big cat. So I just told him what time of day it was. I told him I'd get him some time when he wasn't looking. And they're like, all right, right on. Hang around. I go, do you want me to just get locked up for doing something stupid. I thought we were smarter than that. So when they tried to do things to test, I'd be like, I'll do it. I'll find a way to do it. But I'm not telling you when I do it, and I'll do it on my own. Because they had a motto. Three can keep a secret if two are dead. I'm like, that's the motto, man. So I'll hang it. You won't see that guy anymore, but I'll take care of it. But I'm not going to tell you guys. And it'll just be what it is. And they were like, so having that air of mystery a little bit on how you handle your business, it went a long way. And like I said, they were so concerned with being Hells Angels at that point in time. They kind of. That's the normal stuff they probably would have did to really check our shit. They weren't. They weren't really done. So we were fortunate.

[Sean Ryan]

So, I mean, you're just talking about, you know, do you want an earner or do you want a drunk? And, you know, interviewing Mel, yesterday I interviewed George Christie. I haven't released yet. A couple months ago, you know, and I'm asking these guys, how is the club making any fucking money? Like, I don't understand. I don't know if they're just not telling me because, you know what I mean, they still feel some allegiance to it, But I don't understand what the point of the club is if everybody's doing. You know, yesterday, Mel kind of described it. He said, everybody does their own. They deal their own drugs, they do their own run women, whatever, guns, whatever it is, but it's not affiliated with the club. And so if the only way the club is making money is paying dues

[Chris Bayless]

and it's the underground aspect of what they're doing with the drug dealing. So you've got interconnected drug dealers like SoCal or Southern California guys will be dealing with and selling meth to Midwest guys. And they. The fact that you're both Hells Angels, there's a certain level of one safety that you're not going to get robbed on the deal. Although I think it did happen at one point. I think somebody didn't pay for dope or something. And it was quite a rift within the Hells Angels about it. But everything they do is like, it's. It's involved, but it's not involved. So they know how Rico works. Like, there's other clubs. I know one club that Was like, if you sell an ounce of cocaine, you pay a hundred dollars to the club. So they were, you know, it's almost like he checked every rico, you know, the money laundering component of it, and said, okay, you know, the organization itself is putting a price on the amount of drugs that you're selling. And so it. That is easier to prove. The way they get around doing is we're all independent operators. We're all doing shit on our own. But they pay dues to the club, they go on runs, they buy their Harleys. You know, all that stuff is the proceeds of their legal activity to be in the club. And the club's as much about Persona and badass and we're the number one guys than it is about anything else. No shit. Yeah, there's guys making tons of money. We stopped one of the Chicago Hells Angels with a million dollars cash in Las Vegas that he was getting ready to go. I think he was going to try to launder it through, you know, gambling, small amounts of gambling, and then get the receipts. But we got one of those guys, and it was later. It wasn't when I was involved, and in fact, it was when Mel was out of the club. But that was one of their guys. And another guy got stopped with a trapped car with a bunch of money in a truck going to Mexico to pick up. So those guys were. They're in the game, and they're in the game in a large way. Not all of them are at that level, but there's a lot of them that are. And they use that Hell's angel, that mystique about who they are. Because if it's like Charles Schwab. All right, so if you're going to invest with Charles Schwab or Joe Blow the Ragman, you know, at the end of the day, it's like, I'm going to go to Charles Schwab because he's got the name and the reputation, and he's badass, and he's going to get it done. And that's kind of how the Hell's Angels looked at it. You know, it's the same way. We're kind of the Charles. We're the number one guys. And they use that. They use that. That Persona, that sticker to basically say, you know, when we do business, the Hell's Angels logo comes with it. So whatever you do, there's some Hell's angel affiliation with it. It's like when Mel beat the guy up in for disrespecting his girlfriend. You know, he invokes the Hell's Angels. You know, he tells them inside, do you know who the I am? And the guy's like, yeah. He goes, I'm the Hell's Angel President. He goes, my crew will crush your crew. So now he's using again the Hell's angel logo. The Hell's Angel.

[Sean Ryan]

Gotcha.

[Chris Bayless]

Their mystique, you know, in this particular situation.

[Sean Ryan]

So it is a. An enterprise that they use to influence their personal operations.

[Chris Bayless]

Correct.

[Sean Ryan]

And they all get to use that enterprise.

[Chris Bayless]

Correct. When you come in and someone says, this guy is a weapons specialist in the Navy, that's his mos. He's a. I forget what was called. Weapon specialist. And this guy's a Navy seal. There's going to be a certain amount of what you think about this guy based on the fact that he's a, you know, weapons officer. There's a certain thing you're going to think about this guy because he's a Navy suit. And that Navy SEAL stuff may write on the coattails of, you know, you or Jason Redmond or one of these other guys that they know about. So they know what they get. So they expect the same thing out of you guys or out of this other guy that you've just met that's a Navy seal. So right away, there's a certain Persona that you are certain of. This is who this guy is and what he's about. It's the same way with the Hell's angel patch. You know, there's certain things I expect. One, he's probably a killer. Like, maybe he's a killer. He's not. But they have a reputation of being a killer. So right away with that reputation comes the ability for me to facilitate my criminal activity and make it better by riding on the fact that I am actually a Hell's Angel.

[Sean Ryan]

Gotcha.

[Chris Bayless]

Does that make. I mean, is that explaining that? Right?

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. Makes sense. Is this how. Is this how all gangs work, or is this just motorcycles?

[Chris Bayless]

I think so. I think. I think gangs.

[Sean Ryan]

Italian mob. This is.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, it's a set, you know, and there's. There's people that are drawn to that dark side that, you know, man, there's an edge to that. There's girls that are attacked, you know, that. That. Like that. Guys that are in that mix, they're, you know, they're dangerous. You're living day. I'm on the edge. I'm a criminal. I'm out there freaking, you know, doing. You don't know about, because I'm a mystery. So there's a lot of that that goes on in the criminal world. I think for street gangs, a lot of times street gangs are the result of I need to live in this community and if I don't join this gang, I'm either with them or I'm against them. So it might be easier to me to be with them. So not that there's not, you know, guys that actively. I mean, we've done some great street gang cases where those guys are just homicidal. I mean, just absolutely have no thought of killing somebody. And those are the guys we want to put in jail. So when you have that. But I think it goes to that any collection of bad people, I think it's kind of the same MO like the Latin Kings think they're it. The gangster disciples are going to disagree. You got territorial disputes not only for whether or not it's a drug dealing area or drug tip. Like the Kings are going to be over 33rd in troop and these guys want to be over there selling their dope. There's enough dope tips around city of Chicago, you have to do that. But this guy might disrespect this guy on Facebook now or Instagram. He might rap about this guy as being a jag off. Well, now this guy loads a car, you know, full of thugs, and they go over and they shoot the guy off his doorstep. So you have a lot of that level of violence. It's no, it's not done for any particular reason other than he disrespected me and now we're going to get him.

[Sean Ryan]

Makes sense. How was the patch over? You got patched then, correct?

[Chris Bayless]

No, I got. I became a hangaround and official hangaround. And then they had done. They killed Monty Matthias at that point, murdered him in his shop. They detonated the car bomb on Grand Avenue. They had blown up the president of the club that I was with. Who else did they kill? They killed another guy.

[Sean Ryan]

Were you there for. Were you there?

[Chris Bayless]

I was there when Monty got killed. I was there when the bombs went off. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Can you describe that?

[Chris Bayless]

I think the realization of. Well, there was two things. One, when I interviewed those guys later, but I had the realization of, man, I better make sure I'm checking my 6 and that my is together. My shit's tight. I remember that. I remember Monty was killed so violently.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you see it?

[Chris Bayless]

I didn't see him actually kill him, but I saw the scene later and I saw the pictures and I interviewed the guy that killed him. So how he. And I don't say this because trying to Think of how to put this. I appreciated his fight for survival on what he did. The guy that came in, shot him three times with a.45, didn't go down. Came around the counter and engaged him. Got the gun turned around, squeezed rounds off. The guy that killed him said, he took me to the ground. We're wrestling on the ground, the gun's empty. I'm hitting him with the gun. When I got to the back, money had a 9 millimeter hidden in the back, and I think he was trying to get to that. The guy, the other files him back, grabs a chunk of metal that was on a bar or on a workbench and starts crushing his skull with it. I think at that point, as I recall, he said he went to the back and Monty had some locks on the top. He couldn't get out, so he spun around, had to go pack past Money. Ties him up again. And it's like just saying, you, you. And that's when he took the screwdriver and. And finished them through the neck with a screwdriver. And it was kind of interesting, or kind of interesting, the whole thing a little surreal, a little. When I was talking to the investigators and they pretty much knew how the. By the crime scene, they could figure out what happened. You know, I was. I was pissed off, man. I was like, you know, it was weird because here I am going to try to arrest Monty at some point or if he's involved in things. But on the other hand, I think the level of brutality at his murder, I was like, I was pissed. I was fucking pissed. And it was. It was. It was a strange time, man. And I was like. I talked to atf management came down and they were like, where are we at on this? What do we have right now that we can do? I said, well, we got the gun storage stuff. We've got other information, but. But we weren't able to get a lot more going because of. In that transitional period with the Angels. I go, we got some small buys off people in the area. Like, I bought like, dope off some other guys, bought sawed off shotguns off some guys, bought guns. So I'm like, so this is where we have right now. We got a lot of great conversation about the club in general, what we could use in a RICO as far as outlaying of the enterprise. So we got good stuff on that. And they're like, look, Chris, with all due respect, man, we can't. We don't think you can. We can cover this. We can't cover you Enough that we could preclude you from getting smoked. There's a certain amount of risk you take, but now you're in the middle of fucking war between the Outlaws and the Hells Angels. In addition to that, you did a bunch of the Outlaws already, so they kind of know maybe who you are they might recognize. Hey, isn't this the same guy that. That ended up seizing a clubhouse in Joliet? He goes, so you got that problem to worry about. Then you got the problem of, what if these guys find out or they think you're actually, you know, all these murders going on, somebody inside is telling them, little did they know it was Arm, that other bike club. They're like, they might think it's you. You're the new guy. Who's the new face? You know, all of a sudden, we're all going to jail after somebody sold him dope. That's interesting. So there was a lot of stuff that I didn't want to see at the time. I'm like, no, fuck that, that. I go, I can stay in there. I still, you know, I had a.45 in the back of my pants. I'm. I'm super cool. And I wasn't, man, not by any stretch. So it was good for them to say no, say, we're all done. And so shortly after Monty got killed, I think it was by the fall, we basically told those guys, the informant, hey, we're out. We're. We're done with. With right now. You know, just. Just our business is ruined. Everybody's trying to kill us, blah, blah, blah. You know, so we laid it down sort of like, you know, you made prospect. You would have been the first Hell's angel prospects in Rockford. And we're like, you know what, bro? It's not about getting a patch. It's about, you know, we left it with. It's about the brotherhood and, you know, that kind of thing. They were like, all right, you can't come back. Fair enough. So fast forward. I. That's when I did the Grim Reaper case for the next 15 months out in a Quad Cities, rolled right from that into that next case. And then the informant started to get back in with these guys. We chronicled the violence that they were doing. The informant got kind of back in, and in that time, we were able to stop those violent acts of retaliatory acts, you know, when they went out. We're going hunting tonight for outlaws. I call up state police. I go, we're coming out tonight looking for guys. So they would have two unmarked and a marked. And they would dole around. And then as soon as it looked like we might be on something, they would knock us all down at traffic stop. What are you guys doing tonight? Nothing. Okay, have a good evening. And then they'd let us go. So we did that, I think in the Eureka. We actually charged six of those events where they'd gone out to do something. And we were able to stop it by just interdiction, just having the cops there, like, hey, we're watching you guys. And they knew they were on. So they were like, you know, they go back, they swept the clubhouse for bugs. They thought, we're getting bugged. Somebody's, you know, somebody's in on us. You know, I mean, they were. They were scrambling to figure out how this information was getting out. And they also thought too, and we're in the middle of war with the Outlaws, so of course cops are going to be watching us. You know, we do have to lay low and be smart about what we do. And so that's when it just seemed like it was a good opportunity to get out. And so we stopped. The undercover part for me stopped right there. I went and did the Grim Reapers after that for about 15 months. But at that same time, I was helping Sandy DeValconier put the RICO case together against the outlaws that were coming down and had done all the murders and the bombings and things like that. So in talking to Sandy, who did. I can't say enough about what an outstanding case you put together. I mean, it was two. Two separate ricos. They charged every violent act that these guys had done. But at that time, when they were doing surveillance on the Hill's henchmen, I was there being surveilled. So it helped Sandy in her case to have me there interviewing these guys because it was like, okay, Chris, were they. Were you at Club 251 on Thursday, October 2nd? Like, yes, we were. Okay. So that corroborated, you know, the outlaws that had come forward and flipped to cooperated their statements and made it more. You know, I made more. Yeah, yeah, definitely that occurred. So we're able to kind of put that together. But that's where I learned, you know, I was not Beretta and super cool Batman. I was very foolish and. And lucky. Though, he didn't get killed. So very, very thankful. So. So anyway, so we did the. I did the Grim Reapers next. Did you have any.

[Sean Ryan]

When is the first. Did you meet Mel yet?

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, I had flown with Mel out to. Was a president's meeting in San Francisco and I went out on a plane with them there when I was just official hangaround. We flew out for that.

[Sean Ryan]

Why would they bring you to that high level meeting?

[Chris Bayless]

I didn't, I didn't get to go to the meeting part. I was just. I kind of inserted myself a little bit. I go, hey, you know, I got a brother. If you guys are going, you got to mine. And they were like, I don't give a. It was Ricky. And the informant weren't going to go out. So I just tagged along with those guys. They were like, yeah, come on. So it's just. Just a way to kind of be seen, but not seen.

[Sean Ryan]

So did you interact with Mel at all?

[Chris Bayless]

No, I saw him at the airport, shook his hand. That was it? Yeah, that was it. Just knowing Mel's like, he's going to want to talk to you a little bit, get to know you. And I just. We couldn't take a chance on that because that would have burned out the CI completely. So we did was. I quit after that. I quit for a minute. Did the Grim Reaper case, that lasted about 15 months. Got that indicted, helped Sandy with the RICO. So in 97, that's when the first RICO on the Outlaws came down and that kind of slowed. All the violent acts stopped right then and there. Nothing was going on because these guys just got whacked. Angels weren't doing anything then because they thought, well, these guys just caught a rico. We're going to catch a RICO too.

[Sean Ryan]

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[Chris Bayless]

is

[Sean Ryan]

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[Chris Bayless]

So everybody was kind of waiting. Nobody was doing anything. So Sandy does the first round of Rico's in 97. Bunch of guys pled and then cooperated and gave them more information about what they were doing. Got to interviews a bunch of those guys. And then she did a subsequent RICO like a year later that went back and indicted even more people under the RICO that they hadn't got wrapped up in the first rico. We ended up doing a Title three, or she. I shouldn't say we. Sandy did a Title 3 on the Outlaw clubhouse or the Outlaw President. And the guy that killed Monty Matias, she was up on his phone. So we were getting a lot of, you know, bad talk on the phone calls. And again, every time those guys would go out, try to do something, because we heard stuff on the phone, team would go out, knock them down.

[Sean Ryan]

What kind of close calls did you have? Looked like you.

[Chris Bayless]

That I knew about. Yeah, that, you know, I knew about. I thought I had maybe three that I did know about.

[Sean Ryan]

Is this with the. Out with the Angels?

[Chris Bayless]

With the Angels.

[Sean Ryan]

What were they?

[Chris Bayless]

That. Well, the. The Reapers was a different one. With the. With the. I forgot that we talked about this. On the other. With the Angels, it was probably three that I knew of, but about 20 all together that I had wanting. I had no idea. And that's why I said, man, you gotta humbly walk through life because I. I thought I was. That no way did I know Sandy would say, did you know they were out at your apartment? I'm like, holy. She's like, yeah. And then I talked to the guy that cooperated. He goes, yeah, we were. Did you have apartment. It was a two story, second floor in the corner. And I go, yeah, Sandy's looking at me. Did you know that? I go, no, I'd like to say, oh, yeah, I knew about it. I saw you guys. It's all cool. I had no idea. Why were.

[Sean Ryan]

Why were they at your apartment?

[Chris Bayless]

To kill us? Because we were part of the. Part of the angels. Holy shit. Yeah, so there was probably, I think 20 all together. Three that I knew. So 17. I didn't know. I kept checking them off. There were times when I was riding with the president that got blown up, you know, and you guys, because I'm a no guy, I'm in the back, you know, he's right up front. We're riding together. But I still, because he's a president, I got to give him his leave. Well, they were on an overpass waiting for us to come over the overpass. And for whatever reason, they didn't shoot. And Sandy's like, did you know about that one? I go, I remember the time. She goes, you remember a car on the side of the road? I go, I don't. That's how. I was not paying attention. I go, I did not. She goes, they were going to get you then. And I'm like, fuck. Again. You just think you're. And I go, to God, man. It's the hand of God. There's no doubt about it, you know, Truly believe that. Truly believe that. Chris wasn't watching Chris. God was watching Chris. That's where we were at at that point. There's no doubt in my mind.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you have. Did you ever think you've been compromised by the angels?

[Chris Bayless]

By them?

[Sean Ryan]

No.

[Chris Bayless]

By the grim reapers? I thought, well, actually, the case agent, that was Illinois State Trooper, one of the case agents, Don York was the ATF case agent. And my guy we called Mongo. Pat. Jeff Patterson was with the Illinois State Police. He was their. Their guy. And Danny Roach was another guy. But he came in one day and he goes, hey, man. He goes, they ran your shit. I go, yeah, we're getting ready. I'm ready to go to clubhouse. I'd been in for about six months because they ran your. He goes, doesn't come back. And I'm like, really? He goes, yeah. He goes, dude, they got some questions for you today. He goes, what are you gonna do? I go, well, I'm gonna go to the clubhouse, I'm gonna whip a game. And he starts laughing. He goes, I'm just with you, bro. He goes, they ran your. It all came back it's all good. And I'm like, you, man. It's hard enough to do in this, and then you gotta do that. So I'm good friends with the guy, but I was like. I wanted to dot his. I. I'm like, God dang, bro said, I'm under enough. I haven't had a break since this Hell's Angel. I go, I'm like, I don't need this man. So, yeah, so he was just being a dick. But there was a time after we did. We did Indisha Warrants, they call it, if you're familiar with that. So it's basically Club Indisha. So because we're looking at the enterprise of the grim reapers, we got search warrants based on Indisha warrants, and we're looking for membership in this organization. And so Indisha is like, you know, it could be anything from your. The drug, you know, Grim Reaper patches, Grim Reaper paraphernalia. Anything with grim Reaper ad that was in your house, we were able to take. But if we accidentally ran into pistols, guns and dope, then we get a second search warrant for the pistols, guns and the dope, and then we do that. So what they wanted to do was do these indicia warrants first on. I think we did 25 altogether. 25 warrants in five states. We hit them all simultaneously at the same time. A bunch of SWAT teams, state, local, federal, U.S. marshal Service helped us out. Great, guys. So we do these 25 search warrants. And I was telling, or telling the case agent and the SAC in Chicago, Special Agent in charge in Chicago, I go, if you let me stay in after the search warrants, just let me stay in, I'll be okay. I said, you know, yeah, they got hit with warrants, but we sealed the indictment. So they're not going to get what, the probable cause of the warrants. Yeah, some of it was me, but a lot of the stuff in other states, I hadn't been there yet. So there's no way they could put that on me. So I'm like, let's just. I go, I think I could stay in there. So, like, no teenagers, you're done. The undercover part's out. I'm like, bad mistake. So the U.S. attorney, Tate Chambers, who's probably one of the best attorneys I've ever worked with, he goes, he's like a Southern kind of Southern Illinois, goes, now, Chris, you think he could stay in there with these boys for just a little bit longer? Maybe get some conversation about what they're all doing? I said, fuck yeah, Tate, I said, put me in, coach. He's like, all right, let me make a call. So he calls the sack and he goes, your agent seems to think that he could stay in there and it'd be okay. And they're like, all right. But they. There was a two week gap between that. So once they got hit, you know, went over, the cell phones were. Or pagers, everybody out, don't come back to the clubhouse. It's hot. Stay away. And so the informant, we had that. We did the fake thing in front of. To. In front of the judge. We had the informant say, I told Chris just to stay away. You know, stay back, you know, don't come around. So now two weeks have gone by and things have kind of slowed down. Nobody went to jail. So I was like, you motherfuckers are making it harder now because now I'm gonna have to explain where I was for two weeks and why the fuck I wasn't a good enough brother to be down here when it all went to shit. Start figuring this stuff out. They're like, well, you said you could get back. And I'm like, yeah, if you let me go back the next day. I go, but two weeks is too much. Much too much time, man. It's going to be hard. And they're like, well, we thought you were like this undercover guy. I'm like, so now it's the questioning your cajones. Like, all right, dude, I'll go. So I went back and it. There was a lot of side eye look for a while. I remember we ended up in. We're doing a national run. We're down in Louisville, Kentucky, and one of the. They got together and the meeting was to talk about all these search warrants, the guns. They had lost dope, they lost all this stuff. And one of the guys smoking a joint, he's sitting there and they're like, why didn't anybody get arrested? And he takes a big hit off the joint. He goes, because we've been infiltrated. And I'm looking at the dude and I'm behind the bar and I'm like, all right, what you gonna say next? He goes, somebody's doing us. And the reason we didn't get arrested is that dude still doing this now. And I'm like, it's not me, man. Maybe it's this dude over here. It's not me. And they were like, yeah, you're right. How are they doing us? And they're like, you can't be an undercover. And I was like, thank God. He said that I was like. Felt a lot better about things. He goes, it's got to be surveillance. And you know how those feds can beam down and turn our pagers into wires. And I was like, man, thank God that guy said that, because then they're going to start looking around. Okay, who's the new guy? What's the common connection between all these warrants and the guy that could put all that together? So it was a. It was a rough couple of days, man.

[Sean Ryan]

How the Are you carrying all that weight?

[Chris Bayless]

I mean, you're. You're.

[Sean Ryan]

You're geo fenced into a small area. You've been, what, three organizations now?

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, within.

[Sean Ryan]

So you're paranoid about the current op and all the fucking previous ones probably, too.

[Chris Bayless]

And then the other problem was these guys were aligned with the Outlaws from Joliet that I had done in the very first place. And this is only seven years later. This is 97. Some of those guys that I didn't do knew about me and knew about the seizure of the club and the guys that got arrested. So there was one guy in particular, Ronnie Tallmadge, that was the president, and I knew who he was, and he knew about me because they'd gotten all the records of how they got done and how the search warrant was done on the clubhouse, why it got seized, because they don't want to make that same mistake twice. So there's no more drug dealing in the clubhouse, no more dope in the clubhouse kind of a thing. So he had all that information and knew basically who I was. So Ronnie Talmadge sometimes would call up. They were aligned politically aligned with the Grim Reapers against the Angels. He would call up. I'd answer the phone at the clubhouse in Rock island, and he'd go, yeah, it's Rod. Roddy. I'm on my way out. Okay, like. And then I'd have to make an excuse to leave in about two hours because that's when Ronnie would be there. So I was ducking those guys at the same time with the Grim Reapers. And so now I think about it, yeah, it was pretty fucked up. Holy shit, man. Yeah. But again, grace of God, bro,

[Sean Ryan]

why did you. Why did you bring your wife in?

[Chris Bayless]

First time. First time, because they're starting to question why. There was like, I'm not an exceptionally handsome lad, but kind of in the biker world, I could be a. I could be a solid eight. Pretty hard eight. And so there was a lot of strippers that were like, brother, what up, man? Yeah. Oh, this doesn't look good to you? You're not. I'm like, babe, you know what? I go, mom never stop. My mom always told me, never date a stripper. No offense. My mom told me that. And I go, I got this girl, man. I go, she's good. And they're like, whatever, dude. So they were questioning, like, you know, like, the Grim Reapers had a girl, they go, take this bitch for a ride on your scoot. And I'm like, all right. So I get out and our recording devices were like from the stone age. So we had these Nagra recorders that were like a 1970s reel to reel tape deck. You know, like a porno. Like, so you would wear that down here on your. In your crotch. And it had two microphones that came up to the side. And the quality of it was great, but it's like carrying a brick in the front of your pants. And if you lift up your shirt or have an issue like that. And a lot of times you'd get in a little scuffle with the brothers. You know, they call it a mud check. Especially the Reapers. You know, they punch you in the chest. Like, what do you do? Prospect. Like, I'm gonna wait till I get a full patch and we'll put my hundred dollars on the bar. Are. I'm not always going to be a prospect. And then it's. We're going to go. And they'd be like, ah. So a lot of times they just mud check. See what you're about. Are you going to step up? You're going to, you know, you're going to protect yourself kind of a thing. They want to see what you're about. So there's a lot of little skirmishes. So I'd always have to keep. Like, I cover that. And so you're trying to kind of wrestle with people, punch somebody, and you're trying not to keep this out. The stuff we have now is like, it's unbelievable. And guys bitch about wearing it. It's like this big. Like, somebody could find that. Dude. I was wearing a real, real tape deck back in the day, like in my. So I'm like, yeah, you know, I don't want to hear like, oh, this little tiny thing is. Is too hard to secrete. Like, no, it isn't. So the Reapers had. They had this two strippers. Of course. I get in the clubhouse, one of the president says, prospect. And I'd been. Got. Made prospect, had my prospect patch. He goes, prospect, take that bitch for a ride. She needs some air. Like, all right, so I go out, I get on a scoot. She gets on the back and she starts with the. Rubs the shoulders, goes in the back of my hair down to sleeves. Basically just searching me for fucking wire. She goes down my arms. At this point, I've got a. Didn't have the recorder, thank God, at the time, but I had a 1 watt transmitter, which is. Was a lot smaller, and it was over on the right side. And I also had a big hole in my pants on this side. So she goes down through my legs, my back, my waist, you know, nothing. Well, then she starts fishing around and playing with my junk through the hole in my pants, you know. So I'm driving and my cover team was. You know, the guys are watching and they're seeing this go on, and I'm like, oh, fuck. So she's digging around in my pants. I go, babe. I go, nothing from nothing, but I'm gonna hit the note here in a second. I'm gonna make a mess, and then we're going to crash. She starts laughing. She goes, oh, it's okay. It's all good. So we drive back to the clubhouse. I get off the bike, she gets off. She goes in. I could see the president look at her. And she goes. It's like, sorry. All right. There was times they went out, they would toss my truck because the clubhouse had cameras outside. Both the Grim Reapers, they did it, and the Hell's Henchmen. I'd be inside watching them. The surveillance camera outside, and I see one of the brothers look around, open the passenger door on my truck, dig through the box, look in the back of the truck, you know, pop the hood real quick, look underneath, shut everything, and then come back in. But they would, you know, they would check you like that. So you got to be prepared.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you see him doing that to anybody else or just you?

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, I had to do it to other. I did it when I was a prospect for the Reapers. They would be like. They just, you know, it was a look. It was like they're like. Like, dude. And I'd go outside, look around, you know, pretend like I look around, check his car, come back in. Dude seems clean. It's all right. They're like, okay, all right. So they do it. They did it all the time.

[Sean Ryan]

Have you ever run into another undercover not knowing it? I mean, agencies don't do the best job.

[Chris Bayless]

No, we don't do each other. So that's a fact too, man. That's a big fact. I'm trying to think. I know people have, but I. I never experienced that. I never ran into another guy. Right on. It's almost like night vision. Like, if you look at, you know, if he's got night vision, you get that red. So you could tell. So. Yeah. No, I never had that. Right on.

[Sean Ryan]

What, you know, what. What was your. You know, Mel talked about some of the violent shit that he's done yesterday, but he. I think he left a lot out.

[Chris Bayless]

Out.

[Sean Ryan]

You get any?

[Chris Bayless]

You know, I think what I'll say about Melon is Mel was a violent guy. There's no doubt about it. He had those Charles Manson lamps. When I saw him the first time, man, the way he looked and stuff in his eyes, I was like, matt, a dude's a very bad man. He's a very bad man. And that was my first thoughts when I saw him. I think, smells like, you know, Sodom and Gomorrah. In the Bible, say, angel comes down. They're running away, right? Lot, his wife and Lot's wife turns around to look back as God's decimating, and she turns to assault because she looked back at the past. And I think Jesus actually says in another later on, and Jesus says, remember Lot's wife or remember Lot's wife. Don't look back. So once you're forgiven, you don't look back. Once you come to God and you know in your heart asking forgiveness, God forgives you, it's done, it's forgiven. You do not look back. So I think a lot of what Mel's is with what he had done. I feel like he's gone out of his way to make amends to everybody pretty much ever beat up in his life. It's gone out. He goes, I'm sorry that I did that, you know, and he goes, but he's asked the Lord for forgiveness, too. And I think it's very hard for him. I know when we were doing the sizzle reel for the movie stuff, I actually told him at one point, I said, brother, let's go home, man. I go, I can see it in your eyes now. I go, the guys, I don't want. I didn't want the crew guys that were doing the lighting and all this. I don't. I don't want them to know that guy, because that's not the guy I know now. That's not the guy I'm friends with. So I was like. I go, let's just go home, man. I go, we. We live a. We got a good life, man. Got a roof over our head. We got a great family. You Know that loves us. We don't need to. There's. We don't need to make a movie. I said, plus, not only that, what you do now for people that you just talk to that are in a bad spot, he doesn't turn anybody away that comes to him and says, man, I did this and there's no way I could be forgiven. Mel is like, right? No, that's not right. So I think for him to look back on that violence, it's almost like Lot's wife turning around. And I think he's afraid that he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to re. Experience it. But I go, brother, your story of redemption, it has to start with that. That violence, where you were, you know,

[Sean Ryan]

that's what makes it real.

[Chris Bayless]

Exactly. You know, I told him one time when. When he was doing the sizzle reel, he was minimizing the shit out. Well, you know, I was a. I was an altar boy, you know, I go, brother, I got. I go, I don't arrest altar boys that all of a sudden start breaking windows, you know, on a rico. I go, you did a little bit more. He's like. And he would hang his head and he's like, ah. And I go, brother, I go, you're gonna have to touch that dragon, man. You're gonna have to go back and. And get in touch with that a little bit and. And tell that story. Because your story of redemption, the people that come to him, they knew him back in the day when he was road. So they see this and they know he's changed and they know it's for real. I mean, we've been friends for 20 some years now, and he has not gotten off the God squad ever. You know, he's been once he committed to it, and he saw what it did in his life, the amount of peace that he got, he's like, this is where I need to be. And he goes, the ability to help people and shit, you know, he goes, I would pray on stuff, Chris. He goes, you know, I prayed God that he would bring those keys and let me out of jail. I would say that prayer every night. He goes, goes, God's got another plan. He goes, but the people he's rotated in through my life that I've been able to witness to or help come to know the Lord or just get out of the lifestyle. Because that guy was. He was like the Al Capone of Chicago in that he dealt, he knew and was friends with traditional organized crime. The mob guys in Chicago, all of them knew him, he knew them. They used to break bread together at a place on Rush street in Chicago. They'd be in there eating. He'd be in there eating. He was loud. Locked up with him. When he did his. His stint and his federal stint, you know, they were buds. They knew him. And then he had all the street gangs, you know, the Mexican mafia guys, the Latin Kings, the Gangster Disciples, the Vice Lords. He knew all the leaders and all, and they all liked him. So he. His like, and they all knew him by reputation. They knew what he had done in the past, and he garnered great respect from those guys in the criminal community. So now that he's changed, I go, mel, those guys knew you when you were Mel, all those bad stories. So now where you're at with the Lord and your walk and the redemption component, I go, now these guys can see like somebody that was as bad as them and as violent as them, man, you can change your life. You're not stuck in this rudder, this hole, man. You could actually make a difference and change. And I go, and you're the beacon for that. And I go, but we don't need to put it on the TV screen, man, or you don't need to make a movie about it. You got enough people coming to you now that you've helped. Helped. I go, that's. That's a life well lived. I said, so this other stuff, if it comes and more and it. It's benefit to the God's grace, great. And if it doesn't come, we're okay with that too, man. It's. We've. My humility at this point, I'm like, man, I've got nothing. I don't want to prove anything to anybody. I don't need a movie. I don't need any of that. I just need. I just want to live a happy life, man. You know, where I got some peace.

[Sean Ryan]

So his reputation spread far and wide.

[Chris Bayless]

He was the poster child for the Hells Angels across the country and across the world. Wow. Everybody knew who he was. Everybody knew his reputation. I mean, have you seen some of the earlier pictures? Yeah, that was road, you know, he was a monster. No doubt about it. It. Damn. It's funny. I think it's. It might be a self preservation thing with Mel too, a little bit in that he goes, yeah, but I always had. I always thought of myself, I'm a good guy. And I. And I go, I go, mel, in your heart of hearts, you are a good guy. I go, you're a good man. I said, but Road decided to lead you down a different road, man. And you weren't a very good man, man, at that point. It doesn't change who you are in your heart, but your actions dictate something completely different, man. But again, that's your tool, man. That's what you get these other guys to come up and go, I don't want to live the life anymore. And if this guy can make it okay. He was doing imprisonment when we locked him up. We. We housed him in Henry County Jail, which is a jail, maybe 400 inmates, you know, in a county jail in western Illinois. And there was a guy, Rodney, and have to give you the clip of Rodney. Rodney was a guy that he did prison ministry. His wife died in 1970. So every day after his wife passed away, he was a farmer, get done working farm, cattle, corn and beans come into the local county jail. He had Bible study, and he was the one that bought out of his own pocket TVs for the inmates. And he would have Bible study every, I think, three days, four days a week. He would come in every day after work. So this guy's working his ass off every day his wife died, his devotion to her and to like for his wife. He would come in, she's a devout Christian. He goes, I'm going to witness to these guys how Lord's changed my life. So he would do it every day. So when Mel got out there, this is 1970, Mel's. Now, 20 years later, Mel's in locked up with disguise. Mel and him clicked so tight together right off the bat. Because Mel was already telling these guys in there, you gotta. You gotta come to know the Lord. And let's take a look at what you got caught with. And he did the sentencing guidelines federal. And you go, what's your criminal history? And the guy would say, well, I've been down three times. Okay, criminal history is this. Here's what the. What they're going to give you for your. What you did. The federal systems, like, they assign a number, and the greater the crime, the higher the number. It's like a chart. You go like this. That's how much time you get. So he goes, you're looking at 360 to life. He goes, my suggestion to you, we're going to pray on it. But I think you should cooperate. Come in on yourself and look for a reduction because you're going to get hammered. And that's the only way out of it. Like, well, what if I could beat the case? He goes, you could try, because you could try to beat the case. He goes, if you want to, we'll pray on that too. Let's pray. See what God has in store for you. So he would do that. So he hooks up with. With the prison ministry guy. And at one point the sheriff called and said, or the lieutenant that ran it called me up and he said. He goes, hey, can. Can Mel do his entire time in here? And I go, why? He goes, because he basically came in and these guys would be playing dominoes. They'd be loud in the day room, slapping and everybody's yelling and this poor guy is trying to do Bible study. And so Mel came in one day and he said, hey, check it out, fellas. He goes, we're going to do Bible study in the day room for 40 minutes. He goes, so you got two choices. You can join us for Bible study or you can go sit quietly in your cell and reflect on life. He goes, those are your two choices. Your third choice is to slam dominoes and be loud because you're not going to like what I'm going to do to you after that. So this entire pod got a bunch of guys coming to Bible study. Everybody else would just go into their pod and sit there because he had Hell's Angel Forever tattooed on his friggin stomach. And they were like, okay. And again, it goes back to that. When you wear that tag, you got that respect. And they knew who he was not only by reputation, but that he was a Hell's Angel. And they knew he would get after it if he had to. He loved the Lord, but he'd also punch you in the mouth if you didn't listen to the Bible study that this Rodney guy had come in and took his time out of his own life to get you guys a better track. He goes, you got to respect that. And then actually he went back years later. Rodney had Alzheimer's and was in a home. And there's a great videotape just his friend. He didn't know it, but his friend was videotaping it. And he's talking to Rodney, thanking Rodney for. Thank you for. Wow, it's a great video, man. Real good video. Do you have that? He meld us.

[Sean Ryan]

I'd love to put that up.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, should, because it just. He goes, rodney, I can't thank you enough, tell you enough. And you see Rodney finally realizes, like, who Mel is, even through the dementia. And he just breaks down, he's crying. He's like, thanks, because I'm glad you came. I live in Florida now. I live in Florida where You live in Florida? I live in Florida. I flew in just to come and see you. I wanted to see you here. Wow.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah. So there's that, that ying and yang, ebb and flow, good and bad. It's constant. It's a battle.

[Sean Ryan]

When did you link up with Jay Dobbins?

[Chris Bayless]

Jay was. Let's see, Jay got. I don't want. She's got a great story. I don't want to be a guy that tells Jay's story, but he had gotten taken. He was shot in Tucson, Arizona, through the back. Basically died on the way to the hospital. They paddled him back. So he comes to. He was an outstanding football player. Wide receiver for the Wildcats, very Noel. And the shooting ended up being, you know, was all over the newspaper. Tucson's not a super large community. And so Jake came up to Chicago, then got transferred up to Chicago. And he was my partner for quite a few years before he went back to Tucson. So when he came up, we were in that Sig shooting where I told you the guy, all he wanted to know is if I decocked. That was. That was. The guy I was with was Jay. He got tell that story again? Sure.

[Sean Ryan]

He didn't tell it in here. He told it out there.

[Chris Bayless]

Oh, okay. Okay. We did a gun reverse on two gang bangers from Juliet. Gangster Disciples. We went to do the takedown. We did the undercover part and then we just got in our car and we just figured, ah, we had our stuff, we had done it off site. The. The bad guys weren't by our car, so they didn't see anything. So we did it off site. We. We get in our car and I had my. Our vest and stuff in there. So we put our vest on and shit and. And the takedown team was getting right behind him, knock him down on a felony stop. So as they vector in behind him, Jay and I pulled in front because a lot of these guys squirt, you know, and they're going to run, you know, if you don't have them all blocked in. So we ended up being a lead car. Well, we were getting ready to make the stop there on the radio. They were getting ready to affect the stop. And there was a kid on a bicycle that just out of nowhere showed up. And I'm like, hey, hey, hey, we got to move it down the road. There's a kid on a bike right here. By that point, they had already hit the lights and sirens, let these guys know they're getting stopped. So the guy in the car with the two bad guys Slows down, and I speed up to get away from the kid. Hopefully draw these guys up farther up into the zone where we can knock them down safe and make the arrest. Well, I get kind of blocking the road. Jay gets out the passenger side. I get out the driver's side, and the guy just floors him.

[Sean Ryan]

It.

[Chris Bayless]

And at the same time, the passenger gets out, and he's like, boom, boom, boom. He starts putting rounds down range. They hit Jay with the car before he hits him. I'm shooting back. They hit Jay with the car, and it hits him so hard, it. He does that. You know, that football that, you know, you're like this left, right up, down. He was doing that before he got hit. But before he gets hit, he ups. Boom. Puts one in the guy's. His shoulder. Then he gets hit by the car, Flips up over the top of the car, Actually shoots again before he lands on the ground. Holy. Did anybody else see that? That was kind of amazing. Oh, yeah. Get back. But so Jay's down. I run over. I go, you're all right. He's like, go get him. Like, right on. So I jump in a car, and it's a chase. We had Illinois state police band radios and earth, so it's a call to pursuit, you know, now the cavalry's. Everybody's coming out of the woodwork, End up pitting a guy into a. Like, into a field. They get out, they run. They're. They're in, like, an open field area with a lot of wooded new construction, so didn't see exactly where they went when they left the car, Trying to see if the guy still had a gun. I get up on top of a hill, and I'm just peeping. Just very slow, you know, just as small as I could be. Still had high ground, but I want to be able to see, you know, larger areas. I could. Looking for movement, looking for. Trying to see where these guys squirted to. And then I hear, like, huffing and puffing behind me, and. And it's Jay walking up the hill, and he's got his gun in his badge in his hand, no shoes on because his shoes got knocked off his feet. Knees are completely blown out. He goes, hey, I quit. I go, what? He goes, yeah. He goes, it's twice. He goes, has it even been, like, not even two years. He goes, I'm all done. And I'm like, all right, bro. I go, check it out. I go, how about we find these guys, make sure everything's cool in a gang. I go, then you can Quit after that. But until then, you're standing up. We know there's a guy with a pistol. Hey, let's get down. And so he did. And so. So that was my.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm done.

[Chris Bayless]

That was my first.

[Sean Ryan]

We're in the middle of a gunfight.

[Chris Bayless]

Don't mind. How about you, Quill here. But no, just. Just a great undercover agent and. And a good investigator. No doubt about it. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's the first time. That's the first incident we had, but we worked together. I did a lot of UC stuff, and we did some undercover together, but we bought some pipe bombs off a guy. 1. Oh, we go upstairs. Now that you brought up Jay Dobbins, this guy was making pipe bombs. We're like, oh, shit. Well, so we're like, how many do you have left? We don't want to tell them. Go make us one. Because you don't want to do that. You're just like, do you have any left? I've got two. Don't sell them to anybody. We're going to come get them. So this is right after the shooting. So, Jake, we're going up the steps to this guy's apartment. And the door is slightly open a little bit. And it's one of those apartments where you walk in. There's a little dinette and there's like a kitchen wraparound thing. And it's got like a. Like a hole through it so you can see into the other room. So we opened the door up and we're standing there, and the guy's got a. It's an AR15 looking, but it's a 9 millimeter. I forget SMG or it's the 9 millimeter. Looks like an AR platform. He's just sitting there and he's like this. And we're in the doorway and we were just like. It was like, I can't even jerk my. At this point and get with this guy. We were both. Both in the doorway and we just started. And he goes, hey, just with you. Check it out. It looks like an AR, but it's a 9 millimeter. We're like, holy great. And I'm like. I looked at it and Jay's like. He goes, I gotta stop hanging around you because no good's coming for this. So we go in and the guy's got the pipe bombs. And I go, man, trying to get information about the pipe bomb. What's in it. So we're talking and I go, man, you got a lot of balls building those things, man. I go, I'm afraid that'll go off. Off. And he goes, ah, they're perfectly safe. And he starts banging them together. Yeah, I had kind of the fuse. Just safe. Like, that's good, bro. I trust you. It's safe. So, you know, we take them downstairs and we arrest them, we pick them up and take them out. But yeah, I just came to mind. That was another deal. But we've done just a lot of small deals, small undercover deals like that together, you know, buying guns and dope. We had another guy in our group, Mike Lippman. We did another really good undercover agent. We did one where he did some undercover for the FBI out of the South RA in Chicago. They had organized crime case and they had a guy that was making. This guy was crazy. He's an old school guy. He was making silencers. He was dealing cocaine, stealing cars. He was just like a one stop shopping for criminal activity. So Mike Lippman had gotten into him really good and he really likes mice. So Mike said, hey, this guy's got a stolen Jaguar there. You know, you want to come with me and drive the Jaguar back and we'll figure out how we're going to do that. He goes, I'm going to buy some dope. And he's got some new silencer thing he wants to show me. So I'm like, all right. So we get there and the guy is nuts, but he's like a tool and die guy, so he's really good. So he was making prototype revolvers that you put a silent A can on that actually worked. He was turning the barrel down, fix the silencer. But he had the headspace, the gap like so close that you still heard a noise and there was gas escaping. But it wasn't. It wasn't like, you know, there's a large enough space that is silent. I mean, you could silence it to a degree, but not really effectively. This guy actually had figured out a way to do that with a revolver because that headspace was so tight. Tolerance, you got to keep it loop. So we get there, this guy's half nuts, and he goes, hey. He goes, you're gonna buy that Jaguar. And Mike introduces me to him, he goes, yeah, my boy Chris is gonna take it apart when he gets it back to his shop. He's like, all right, great. He goes, great car. It was an insurance job from another mob guy from the East Coast. So I'm looking at the Jaguar and he goes, hey, you guys need a bomb? Any bombs? And I'm looking like, is this some Type of ATF undercover scenario at the Academy where you go in and a guy's got a smorgasbord of shit. And I go, bombs? I go, yeah, I suppose we could all. He goes, dynamite? He goes, you guys could use dynamite. Your line of work, you need dynamite, right? I'm like, yeah, sure. They're like, you know, when in Rome, okay? So he gets in his garage and he's got this box and he pulls it out. And I didn't pay a lot of attention during the explosive instruction at the academy, but I knew enough to it. It was very sweaty and I knew that if it was crystallized, it was a lot more shock sensitive because, I mean, it's pretty stable. I mean, you could throw it around, burn it, you know, it's not going to go off unless you've got a. You've got an actual cap that's going to do it. So he goes, or high explosive. So he goes. I go, what am I going to do with this? I go, I throw it at somebody. He goes, oh, yeah. He goes, you need some caps? He goes, you need a bomb? I go, I don't necessarily need one, but I could probably use one at some point. He goes, okay. He goes, here's the dynamite. So he's got it on the table. He goes, let me find the caps. So he digs around his garage, he pulls out a box. He's got three blasting caps in a box. And they've got the blasting caps to get the shunt to make sure there's no static electricity. That's all of a sudden connect the circuit. So it's got that little shunt thing. I think it's a shunt. My wife's going to kill me for not knowing what the correct terminology is. But it had the shunts in him. So I knew enough that. Okay, that's okay. So I get the caps and I go, well, what am I. How do I. Oh, what do I gotta do the whole thing for you? He goes, you need a timer. You want a time going? I go, sure. He's digging around his garage. He's got a mechanical egg timer that's already set up for double a battery pack. It's got like six plastic where you clip them in. It's already wired up, soldered, no batteries in it or anything thing. And he goes, yeah. And he goes, the egg timer. He goes, these things are beautiful. They never fail. And he'd already wired two wires, one to the actual timing thing that you turn, and the other one was to collect when the timer comes back up and it hits now connects the circuit and the bomb goes off. So he's like. He goes, remember, you got to go past five minutes, though, and come back. He goes, because if you just do one or two, it might just go all the way front. He goes, you can't do that. You got to go to five and then come back if you want. Like. Like anywhere from one to four minutes, because you got to go to five and then bring the dial back. I'm like, okay, good to know. So he gives us all that, and so now we got this bomb. So Mike's over looking at the silencer on the. He goes, does this thing actually work? And that guy goes, watch. So he loads it in his garage, and he fires a round off into a mattress and some other shit that he had up against the wall. We're like, oh, fuck. So he does that, and it actually worked pretty well. And I'm like, this is kind of amazing. So Mike buys the silence gun off him. He buys a quarter key of cocaine off him. And we get the Jaguar. And we think we're fucking Miami Vice at this point. We're like, we are. Who is cooler that we got a fucking stolen Jaguar? We got this dynamite. So the FBI guys, super happy, obviously, they listen to the wire, happy with what we got. So we get out. We're still on pagers at this time. We didn't have cell phones there, so we didn't want them following us out. So we were kind of make sure we were clean. We got to a pay phone. I call our explosive guy. I go, hey, man, I got three sticks of I don't know what. He goes, what's it look like? And he's like, oh, it's this kind of dynamite, okay. He goes, what's the condition of it? I go, it's sweating all over the place, leaking, it's wet. He goes, all right, any crystals? I go, no, no crystals. So I'm actually touching it and fucking with it, which is dumb. So I'm moving it around. Gooner. Mike Lippman, we called him Goon. Goon's in. Let me see that dynamite. So he's like looking at. We're touching it. So he goes, well, don't touch it. And I'm like, okay. You know, I didn't know why. He goes, just don't touch it. He goes, make sure the caps and the explosive are separate. I go, yeah, it's with the cocaine in the trunk of the car. We're going to drive it back to The FBI office. He goes, I'll meet you at the FBI office. And I'm like, okay, cool. So we start driving along, and I start getting this headache like. Like my eyes are popping out of my head, and I'm just like, man, like, dizzy. I'm like, what the fuck? And Gunner's like. He goes, it's the nitroglycerin that's leaking out of that. He goes, it's absorbed into our fingers and our hands now because we were stupid enough to touch it. And so we got these massive, pounding headaches. So we get back to the FBI office, get out of the car, and I'm a little up. Our bomb guy shows up on the set. He takes the dynamite. He used gloves. He didn't touch it because he didn't want to hit it. So I go upstairs and tell the. The Rack, hey. I go, and with atf, Is Ivan here? Ivan was a FBI agent we were working with. They're like, he's on his way back. I go, well, let him know we got the bomb. It's downstairs in the parking lot. And the guy's like, you have a bomb in the parking lot? I go, it's a little one. It's only three sticks of dynamite in the caps. And the guy's like, are you kidding me? Why did you bring a bomb to the parking lot? Because this was our meat spot. It's your case, gonna be your evidence. Thought I'd come back to the yacht. And they were like, the guy had lied because we're gonna have to evacuate the building. I go, I don't think it's that necessary that we go that far. But, you know. So it was like, maricopa. Sorry, good point. Our bad. Shouldn't bring a bomb in the FBI office. That's probably not a good thing to do. So that was like, Jay was with us, I think, out on that one as a cover team. And Mike Litman, like I said, another really good undercover agent. So, yeah, that we thought we were so cool, you know. Little did we know, just the stupidity of every aspect of where we were at, what we were doing. But, yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

When did you move on to the Sons of Silence?

[Chris Bayless]

I didn't. I did them. It was a. I didn't do them. Blake Boatler and Daryl Edwards were two friends of mine, ATF agents. Another great undercovers. I stand on the shoulders of some guys that have done some fucking amazing shit around the country. These guys had gotten in, and they were actually full patch with the Sons of Silence Motors Tycoon gang And we, they were looking for a club that was going to get threatened by these guys. They had pretty much locked down Colorado Springs. And the, the case agent said, you know what? Blake Boulder said, maybe we can get. If you guys ride around as a bike club, the normal protocol would be, hey, get, get a meeting together, you guys. And we, we came up with Unforgiven was our motorcycle gang. So we had Unforgiven top rocker, Colorado bottom rocker, which is a no, no. We start driving around their bars in their area. So they were having meetings about who the are these unforgiving guys. And Blake Boatler's in there recording the conversation. They go, we see these guys, got to have them come in, yank their shit. Normal protocol. Like, all right, seems about right. So we're driving around. So Blake Bolder says, hey, you guys been to bars? They saw you. We kind of got the threat. If you get a little bit more, maybe be seen one more time. Go to their bar, Jenny's Bar in Colorado Springs. I'm like, okay, so we, you know, we're fucking riding our Harleys in. We get off to scoots. We go in. Well, the time that Blake had left the bar and told us there were no sons of their silence there, the actual guy that Doug Luckett was like, people get into fights and they're like, yeah, that guy was 6, 8, 400 pounds. Doug Look. He was 6, 8, 400 pounds. Doug Lookett had gone there. So when we walk in, he's there and the entire bar's there. And so it didn't end well for us at that time. He came out, he said, you guys are it. You think you're that you're not. And they fucking got us. They got us good. So the whole bar basically beat the fuck out of us in this bar. That's where I got kicked and got the ear ringing from. There was one funny point in the middle of the fight. This is a funny kind of a funny story. So I'm on the ground, I just get kicked. A bunch of people are piling on top of me, putting lumps on me. I get pulled off by a guy named Babyface. John Carr was another great, great guy. Big, jacked up, yoked up guy. He pulls everybody off, gets me up. Well, they grab a baby face. They got him a full Nelson, and they are working him like a heavy bag. I mean, they're just bam, bam. Beating them pretty good. So the one guy that's beating him looks over at his old lady and he goes, go get a pool cue. Or no pool ball and come back and crush his skull. So she, like, runs over the pool table. Now, I'm trying to get. I'm like, this is. I'm trying to get to this chick. So she runs back before I can get there, and she's got this pool ball in her hand. And he goes, crush his skull. So rather than crush his skull, she just goes. And she threw it at him, and it goes, boop. And it fell off his chest. And, like, everybody at the bar kind of caught that and started kind of laughing like. Like, okay, that was pretty funny. And then he went back to beating our fucking ass. But Jay was in there. Jay was part of that. That crew, too, that day. But, yeah. So that's the Sons of Silence case. And then we got out to the door, ran outside, nursed our wounds, and rode off into the sunset. So, yeah, that's it. That's. That was my only son's silence. But those guys at the end of that case, I forget how much. Much methamphetamine they bought. They got explosives. They got bombs, they got machine guns. It was. They did a. Blake and Daryl did an outstanding job. Really good case. Wow.

[Sean Ryan]

Where were you when I read that you got threatened to. They're gonna kill you, poke holes in your chest.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, that was a guy. So we started after probably 10 years of the bike case. I had the same U.S. attorney in the Central District of Illinois. He did the Outlaws case. He did the Hell's Henchman angel part. And then we went back, and because we could show historically that the Grim Reapers had bought about 250 kilos from the Joliet Angels, we did a dry conspiracy on those guys and arrested, like, I think, three or four members out of Joliet Outlaws and got them on the drug conspiracy. So this is like up to 2,000 right around in there, I think. Yeah, 99. 2,000. Right. We're still working on Jay's. Or not Jay's, but Mel's indictment when we got him on 2004. Then after that, I started doing. We were doing these Gideon operations around the country. And so we would go to, like, the worst city in the country, and we would deploy into there. We would spend about two months doing a workup talking to the local police department. Who are your worst guys? Who's the shot callers? Who are the hitters? Who are the trigger pullers? And we would focus on just those guys specifically to try to wrap them up in anything we could get. You know, Al Capone eventually went to jail for income Tax evasion. So never went to jail for how many people he killed or shot or booze, but income tax. So we found, like, ways to go in and try to take that violence out of that community. One of the ways we did it was stash house robberies. So I pretend like I'm a stash house robber, I'm a courier, and I know where probably 20 kilos of coke is. And it's kind of a whole scenario. I don't want to bore you with it completely, but it's not boring. And a lot of. A lot of I'll drink that. A lot of people are still out there kind of doing something similar. We changed it up a little bit, but we still do these type of proactive cases. So I act like a drug courier and I go to the worst guys you got in the neighborhood. I go, you got some killers, man. And I met one guy one time in Vegas, he sat there and he pretty much succinctly put it in play. Because I don't need robbers to rob this place. He goes, I need killers that are going to rob. Because the way it's set up is I know where the dope is and I can drive us there. Eventually, however, there's four armed guards and they're vatos, they're cartel guys. They're not going to give that dope up just because we asked for it. And they're like, no, we understand. And we run it just the exact way a stash house runs for the cartels. So everything looks exactly above board in the criminal community because that's how they operate and that's how our scenario is set up. So there's always a plan. The only guy that will. That is a connection between the stash house robbers and the cartel is me. I'm the guy that's. That is going to be introducing every. Well, actually not introducing, but bringing them to the stash house to kill everybody and steal the coke. So they know at the end of the day, cartels, they don't like 20 bricks gone. They're going to want to know where their dope went and they're going to try to find who fucking robbed them. So I'm the only linchpin. So these guys generally always have another conversation without me that involves killing me and this guy. In this instance, they were talking about, what are we gonna do with his body? What are we gonna do with Chris's body When we get done killing him, he's like, poke about 10 holes in that motherfucker, man. We gotta get Deep There, poke 10 holes, he goes. Cause what happens is when we throw him in the water in a river, gas blows him up and he floats to the surface. Poke about 10 holes. 10 holes in that motherfucker. He'll stay down with the fishies. So that's what that was. The. We're gonna kill Chris. But generally in those cases, they're always gonna kill you at the end. But we've got. Got things in place that they're not going to kill you until they get the location of the stash house and we take them off before that.

[Sean Ryan]

Holy.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, it works great. It's the most. Some of the most violent guys I've ever met in my life around those cases, because they're about. We're killing everybody in the house. I'm like, right on, bro. And then so many crimes have been solved after the fact when these guys cooperate, because you're looking at a chunk of time on that case. Most these guys already have a history, violent history. They've already got convictions that bodes against them. On the federal case, they got a gun. The amount of dope we charged that they were going to rob. So they look at a substantial more. And the only way to get out from under that is to cooperate. So you end up with guys that say, well, I could tell you about three murders or four murders. Give those up.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, I'm just, you know, going through some of the stuff in this staff house operate. Staff house, operates staff stash house operations. I mean. Phoenix, Arizona, 2009. 70. Arrest during wave of home invasions at drug locations. Oakland, California. 2012. Police chief requested ATF help after violent crimes rose 20%. Four months later. Four months later, shootings were cut in half. California, 2012. Crew member provided information that led FBI to solve nearly $1 million in armored car heists. Chicago, 2013. Arrested Gangster Disciples enforcer from Inglewood, one later charged with murder on bail. Did you put a real dent and you're bad people. What was going on over there?

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, but it wasn't just me, man. I. I mean, I. The ones you're talking about, I did, but we've done those around the country, and guys have done some really heinous guys. I think I might have. We were talking earlier about the Ms. 13 guys that cut the fetus out of the girl's stomach. Richie Zayas, my partner from Tampa, Cuban guy, He did those guys.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm sorry, what did you just say?

[Chris Bayless]

The MS.13, it was the guys that FBI had a case and they had an informant, female Informant that was giving them information, they'd relocated her and she came back to her red zone. Unfortunately, they found her. They lured her to a bridge, under a bridge. She was pregnant. So by virtue of the fact that she gave information about Ms. 13, they went ahead and held her up and they cut the fetus out of her stomach and then slit her throat. Richie Zayas, my partner from Tampa, had done that. Sec. Cruz guys bought guns and dope off those guys. And then he testified at the sentencing about all the other criminal activity they had done and were doing at that time, in addition to the murder that they killed that witness and cut the fetus out of her stomach. Stomach.

[Sean Ryan]

What's it like looking these in the eyes?

[Chris Bayless]

It's fun because you know they're going to go to jail in a minute on the takedown and stuff. But I tell you, that's where people say there's not evil out there. Everybody has self worth. That's not true. I believe people can change. I believe generally that people are good, but there is evil and there is evil in these people's eyes. Man, they've got that look and you just know, you can just feel it. This guy will kill me in a minute. This guy has killed people before. But those are the guys we need to. We want to remove them from the community. You know, it's like crabgrass in your lawn. You know, the bad guys, the uber violent guys are the crabgrass. You want to remove that so the rest of the grass can grow, Healthy grass can grow. And so you got to have proactive law enforcement and you got to do that. But you know, with the anti law enforcement stuff and everything's racially biased, it's like, it's harder to do those without having to fight that defense. A lot of times. Yeah, you know, it's almost like on the stash house stuff. After I retired, you know, I did a thing for the Chicago Sun Times because I was tired of getting this. You're getting the defense side of it, but you're not getting the proactive side and why it's important to do those kinds of cases. And they're like, well, you're just doing it in this one community. You're doing the black community, their Hispanic community or this community. I was like, no, we're doing it in any community. We find violent guys that are willing to step up and kill somebody for cocaine because they're not doing good in the community. I said, we need to remove them because they're not just doing this, they're doing Other criminal activities. And so when we meet them and we talk to them, and they're like, hey, we're it like the guy. I did a couple for the FBI in Chicago, and they were the. It's the one you read. They were the enforcers. You get that off the Internet. Is that. Is that where you got. Yeah, those guys were. Okay. Those guys were the enforcers for the Gangster Disciples on the south side. And the guy told me, the guy that led the crew, the guy I stepped to first, to say, hey, you got anybody to that would do this, are interested? He says, I'm interested, and I've got a crew. And I said, well, I got to meet them, because you want to get that conversation from everybody. And I meet his crew, and he comes over to me afterwards. He goes, what do you think of my little go getters, man? I said, dude, they're about it, man. They'll jerk a pistol and go to work, won't they? He goes, yeah. He goes, you know that violence in Inglewood, all these murders that have happened? The last five murders on the south side? My guys. My guys took care of that. I'm like, right on, brother. So that's the people that you're taking out of the community. Those uber violent guys you're taking out of the community. And that's important to do, man. But they're like. They were, you know, black Gangster Disciples, so they're a black gang. So the question is, from the judge and stuff, why are you picking on. You know, you're just doing black guys. I'm like, look. Look at the violence in these two communities on the west side and the south side of Chicago. Look at the level of violence there. I go, it's almost like losing your keys in the garage, but you're looking for them in the kitchen. It's like, because the light's better and it's warmer. I said, bro, I'm not going to catch. I'm not going to find the keys in my kitchen because I lost them in the garage. I'm not. If I'm tasked with preventing and stopping violent crime, especially usually with a firearm, I go, I got to go to places where it's very violent and they're using firearms. And unfortunately, it's disproportionately in these communities. But there's good people in those communities that. That if the priors are taken out, gives them a chance to.

[Sean Ryan]

And you know what happens if you don't pay attention to those communities and you let all those criminals keep going? You're a racist then too?

[Chris Bayless]

Correct. Dude, there's no. It's common sense of good judgment has left the arena.

[Sean Ryan]

It's just a losing battle.

[Chris Bayless]

Absolutely.

[Sean Ryan]

Try to do good, you're a racist. You try to do bad, you're a racist. Like. Well, it's just. It's just, it's. It's. It's ridiculous.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, we had 30 shootings last weekend in Chicago.

[Sean Ryan]

30 shootings.

[Chris Bayless]

And that's not even a. It's not even what we call a good weekend for shootings. Crime has. Violent crime, murders. They've gone down to a degree, and it's kind of on a slope. And it happened when the attitude toward law enforcement changed, unfortunately. You know, it's got to be political. And I think finally, after the George Floyd shit was done and the defund, the police attitude was done. Proactive law enforcement's coming back, and you're starting to see those. The benefits of that, which is taking these violent guys off the street.

[Sean Ryan]

Man, I said that wrong. I need to correct myself. I said, good or bad, you. You pay attention and you give the community attention and you arrest the bad guys.

[Chris Bayless]

Right.

[Sean Ryan]

In a black community. And you're a racist if you neglect it because you're labeled a racist and you let crime run rampant. Good, you're a racist.

[Chris Bayless]

Right.

[Sean Ryan]

So what the are you supposed to

[Chris Bayless]

do, you know, do you keep your nose down, you do your job? I know what I do. I know when I go to heaven and God says, what about these guys? I can't account for everybody I put in jail. You know, I didn't. Not gonna lie on anybody. I'm not gonna do any of that. You know, these guys went to jail because they jerked a pistol and went to work, or they went. Or they were talking about doing it, or they've already killed people. So these are the guys that we want to do, man. Man, it's like. Like Mel and I, God bless him for change his life, and I'm glad I did. But at that time, Mel needed to be taken off the set. He was the head of the snake. And I think that's why once he changed and he went to jail, that's why the U.S. attorney that had all these cases, he goes, man, we've had a good run. We've done a lot of clubs. We've done a lot of violent guys. There's no more that rico's that Sandy the bulkaneer did up in Wisconsin. And that stopped the violence, man, because guys got. We're looking at life. And some guys got life it's like, you know what? And for what? You know, it's almost like the freaking Rotary Club got after it with the some other philanthropic group in the community and said, your fish fry is not that good. So we're going to kill you guys. I mean, there's no actual reason to do that other than be just for the sake of violence, being violence, man. So.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. Well, Chris, let's take a break.

[Chris Bayless]

Let's do it.

[Sean Ryan]

And we'll talk about what. What got you out of the atf.

[Chris Bayless]

Why'd you leave right up?

[Sean Ryan]

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[Chris Bayless]

Hi, I'm Sarah Adams, the host of Vigilance Elite's the Watch Floor, where we highlight what matters. It became a permissive state. Explain to you why it matters, and then aim to leave you feeling better and informed than you were before you hit play. Terrorists, hostile intelligence agencies, organized crime. Not everything is urgent. But this show will focus on what is need to know, not just what is nice to know.

[Sean Ryan]

We're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into kind of your last assignment, if that's what you call it and why you left ATF after 30 years, which may be enough in itself.

[Chris Bayless]

That's probably good enough reason. Yeah, yeah. The last. So I started working full time for SOD Special operations division, Undercover branch. So I didn't work out of any one particular area. I worked all over the country. So we were doing these Gideon operations and we would. Again, like I was talking about, we would focus on the communities that were really uber violent. And we were. We were running at those. So we were out in Cleveland, Ohio. Excuse me. And at that point, I was 55, maybe. I think I'm 55. I was 55 at the time. Or 54. 54. And we were running. We would do. On those Gideons, we would run maybe 14 different operations a day, undercover deals. We'd have a big board whiteboard at the off site. We'd like, okay, informant so and so's got this guy, this guy, this guy, two undercover buys just to meet for conversation. So we kind of mapped out our entire day to kind of maximize. Because we're only there. We would do. We would run about four months straight. You know, every day for four months. We take Sundays off or something, go to a ball game. But for the most part. Excuse me. You never got away with it or away with it. Away from was just always, you know, because we were trying to maximize the amount of time we had or maximizing much number, not defendants, but maximize enough encounters in that period of time as we could in four months. So we were working pretty, pretty fast, the ones out. And I think the most we ever did was 14. And that was out where you talked about that one in Oakland, California. We were ripping and running every day, just into the evening, come back, cut reports, get ready for the next day. Informant says this, I met this guy undercover. He wants to meet the next day. So it's boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So we were doing one in Cleveland, Ohio, and we'd done a bunch of deals. It was near the end of the case. And we got information. A guy, that violent dude, couple time convicted felon, gang banger, two of his buddies had like a bag full of stolen guns. And it was just a simple deal that you've done. I've done, you know, I don't know, a couple hundred times easy, no problem. We get to the. We get to his house. I back up my undercover truck and I get out of the truck, he's down, he's got this bag of guns, looked like guns sitting on the ground and unzips it. I look in, I see this whole shitload, just pistols and a couple shotguns and some other things. I'm like, all right, that looks good. So I turn to the undercover truck door, four door Escalade, and I open the back door, and I hear that click. I hear the hammer going back and locking back. I was like. I turn around and he's. He's got it up, and it's right in my face, and he goes, because I think I need to see some money. But he's got that look like, I just want to see where it is so I don't have to pull it off you later kind of look. And I was like, we train and we teach, like, tying up with a guy with a pistol. Because I know my cover team's about 20 seconds out, maybe 25 seconds, which is a long time when you're fighting for your life. But I know they're gonna come up and be there. But I was too far away from him to go hands on. And where we were situated, I knew where the cover team was gonna come up and deploy out of their vehicles and move up. Not that they wouldn't have had any trouble navigating that and doing the thing, but I felt. I thought maybe I could just close the distance with this guy somehow, and then I could go hands on. So he starts to go like this, like, get down on your knees. And. I couldn't give him that. I couldn't give him that.

[Sean Ryan]

So

[Chris Bayless]

sorry. So I tried to close the distance, and I got the money out of my pocket that I had, and I was just gonna throw it in the air. And so as soon as I took the money out, the entire expression in his eyes and on his face changed, and he starts smiling, and I was like, motherfucker. And he drops the gun, or he leaves the gun down and hangs onto it, and he pulls the trigger, and he lets the hammer go forward. And I ended up buying the gun and the bag of gun he had on me, and then the bag of guns I bought them all, got them in the truck, and then I left. And I was like, for whatever reason, can't even tell you that it's not the first time somebody had put a gun in my head. On the home invasion crew guys that we were doing, stash house guy grabbed me, and Frank Ferrello grabbed me into a stall in the bathroom. We were having the meeting in a restaurant with his crew to do the store, the stash house robbery. He goes, let me talk to you for a minute. I'm like, all right, get in the Bathroom. And he gets me in the handicap stall, and he gets a 45 out and he puts it up under my chin. He goes, we're for real, bro. If this thing isn't for real, I'm gonna fucking get you. And I'm like, I don't doubt that for a minute, bro. It's for real. He's like, all right. Did not have a. That did not affect me in any way. And there were other times guys would, you know, we're in the gun business, so there's always going to be a pistol. But I cannot even. Couldn't even tell you why. That was just. I remember thoughts in my head were like, cleveland, Ohio, I'm going to die in Cleveland fucking Ohio. All the shit I've done. And it's Cleveland. And I was talking to. I ended up getting some help on it. I was talking to the psychiatrist lady that helped me with it. And I could tell you where the sun was in the sky, the birds were chirping. I, I, I know why that I had that memory of that at that particular moment in time. And then I felt like I let my kids down because I'd fucked up. So, So I, it really took, for whatever reason, again, I. I don't know if it was.

[Sean Ryan]

Why do you feel like you let your kids down?

[Chris Bayless]

Because I always told him, I'm fine, I'm gonna be okay. You know? And they're like, you. I could just see, like, my daughter saying, well, you always said you were going to be okay, and you're not. No. And so I. For me, it just felt like that. I just felt like that had that feeling. I was just. I felt stupid. I felt like, again, I'm smarter than this. How did this guy get the ups on me? How did this happen like this? And I think that. But the other thing, it was so personal, man. I mean, we were right there. He smelled like shit. He smelled like bad BO and bad cologne and weed with bad breath, you know, and you're that close, and you just. It's all that things, you know, you become hypersensitive and acute to that. And I was just. I couldn't get on the ground. And like I said, I stepped forward and then got the money out, and it all went. But it's, it just took its toll. So that was when I think Tina was down. My wife was down getting her bomb tab. She was going through the. At Redstone Arsenal, where the training is. So I know she was down doing that. And I remember when she got back, it was. I Was just incredibly weird. I'd be middle of the night, it'd be 12 o', clock, and I'd have this freaking, something's wrong. I'm either going to have a heart attack or there's something wrong around here. And I go down. I look outside, go down the basement, and I would just pace for like three or four hours. I would walk, you know, trying to ramp myself down, like, there's nothing wrong with you. You're not going to die. Not having a heart attack. You're okay. You know, I've been in peer support since 1988. You know, I've talked to guys that had been in way worse situations than that. And I felt like. I felt. Part of it was. I felt like such a. I felt like, how did I not. How I didn't get shot. I have friends that got shot. First 14 days on the freaking job, I buried my friends that have been killed. I've got friends that are. You know, they're in a wheelchair right now because they've been shot. I just. It was hard to equate that I was feeling this shitty about that incident that I could not. I was like, this is a nothing burger, man. This is absolutely nothing. And so I'm in the talking to. I went to a friend of mine that's from the Illinois State Police, who runs a center for families for first responders that have, you know, been in a shooting. They run the whole family out there. Cornerstone. It's a great program. So I called him up, I said, man, I got some. I'm dealing with something I can't figure out. So we get together and he goes, I got the perfect lady for you to talk to. And I knew his story and all the shit he had been through, and I. So I assumed he was talking to her to get through his stuff. He goes, oh, no, I'm good. I don't have a problem. He goes, but you're fucked up. He goes, you need to go talk to her. I go, I know your background. I go, you gotta be fucked up. I go, I'm not the only fucked up one here. I go, you're fucked up, too. He's like, no, you're more fucked up right now. He goes, here's the name, here's the number. Call her, all right? Set up an appointment. I go in, she listens to the whole story and she goes, I want you to read a book. I'm like, okay, what's that? Sorry, man, it's all good. She goes. She goes, called Touching the Dragon. She Was written by a Navy seal. I'm like, okay. So I started reading this book, and I'm like, great book. What a great career this guy's had. He gets shot and he struggles with getting shot. Now he's off the teams. He's not anymore. He got shot one time in the knee. Alcoholic, blew up his family, the whole nine yards shot one time. So I get to page 207 at the bottom, and the guy that came to talk to him, to help him had been shot 25 times and lived. And so he goes, I'm sitting here and I'm talking to this guy that had been shot 25 times, and he's helping me try to get better. I've been shot one time. And like, he talks about shame. He was like, now I get it. Said shame is that thing you kind of a. It's. It's a gift you give yourself, but you don't want it. But you wear that. Like I said, man, I could not figure out why I was in the basement walking for four hours. I'd not been shot.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you know now?

[Chris Bayless]

Absolutely.

[Sean Ryan]

Why?

[Chris Bayless]

It's the. It's the straw. When you, when you operate at that hyper vigilance level, at some point your mind goes, oh, we're all done now. Your body's like. Your body's done. My mind's telling you we're all done. And it ends it. And that's where I was at. I was at the end of point.

[Sean Ryan]

And, Chris, you did 30 years. You were undercover within a year, right? That's a lot of, man.

[Chris Bayless]

It is. I realize that.

[Sean Ryan]

It is, yeah. A lot of. But again, I know most of it as a one man band.

[Chris Bayless]

Yes, it's true, it's true. But you don't want to be that weak link in that crew, and you know that as well as anybody. You don't want to be that guy that's got a problem. You don't want to be that guy that can't take it. You want to be that guy that you want to be. We're Superman. I don't know if you notice that, but we got capes on our trunks, drugs. You know, you want to be that guy, or at least you have that for yourself. And maybe that helps you get through 30 years of. But at some point, man, the, The. The body keeps score. And I was just at that point where So I did the EMDR and prolonged exposure, and it was. I got myself back to quasi normal.

[Sean Ryan]

How long did that take?

[Chris Bayless]

You know, I was surprised at how quickly the Anxiety point, night left, the prolonged exposure. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but I go through it with the therapist. She's got a little recorder and I thought it was dumb at first. She goes, I want you to tell the same story I told you. I want you to tell it in the recorder and do it five times. Record it, and I want you to listen to it for five times. Takes about 35 minutes the whole time. She goes, you need to do it every day. So I'm like on my way home and I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? I'm gonna speak into this record. I'm pacing in the basement for four hours at night. I'm thinking about just driving off a cliff. I go, this little recorder in this shit is not gonna work. But I did it anyway. I was like. And I noticed the anxiety level at about day five started to lessen. And then I noticed that I would get. I could not tell it. I'm surprised that like, I got to the point where I could tell that story in the recorder and I wasn't. It didn't have that visceral friggin effect anymore. It seemed like it was almost. It was there, but it wasn't there. You know, it was more abstract. It was kind of stepped away from where I was at mentally. And I was like, wow, okay. I slept, started sleeping better, felt better. And then she did the emdr. And that. By the time I did the emdr, I was like, I felt that. You don't have that right here where your anxiety levels through the roof. I'm looking at everybody. It just. That kind of like, it finally. It was this kind of. I had some relief and it. So that book and that. That lady definitely saved my life. No doubt. Wow. Yeah. But again, I'm not the. When I look at what other people have done, like the John Ratunos, you know, the Richie Zayases, these guys that have. Man, I. It was funny. I talked to Ricky Zayas later, but I. He goes, do you have nightmares? And I'm like, yeah. He goes, man, he goes, I wake up screaming and he had gotten a divorce and he was with his new girlfriend. And she's like, yeah, he screams like every night. And I go, hey, dude, you remember all those times I was telling you, like, I'm struggling with this and you said, hey man, just suck it up, drink a beer, do a shot, got off to the next adventure. I go, would have been really nice if you said, hey, I have nightmares. So I'm Like, I tell everybody now, if you're having an issue or problem, do not freaking swallow it. And especially don't start doing shots and drinking beer because you're just exasperating that situation. I said, come talk to me or. So I go, I've got. No, I've done what I've done and I'm good. I said, but walking. You've done 30 years or guys that have done 20 years or 10 years on the teams. I go, there's no sense being that miserable and having that constant vigilance and then anxiety in your gut, in your head. It just takes. It takes the fun out of life and everything. So, you know, if anybody gets anything about me talking today, get some help. And there's plenty of things out there. We've come so far in our ability to treat that and move that forward. You got to do it, man. You can't not do it. And you owe it to your family, you know, to yourself.

[Sean Ryan]

We talk about this all the time on here. You were going to kill yourself.

[Chris Bayless]

I. It got to the point where I. I knew that in the basement, I. I couldn't go on. I. I can't. This. The amount of anxiety and heightened sense of just like skin crawling off. I just. I was like, I can't live like this, man. I can't do it. But then did you know how you

[Sean Ryan]

were going to do it?

[Chris Bayless]

It never got that. I. I would probably just shoot myself, but I never. I never sat down and planned it out or I'm gonna get in the truck, I'm gonna drive away. Because my thing, my was like, my kids had put up with so much of me being gone and things like that. That was the thing that I was like, there is no way. I was just like, dude, you gotta quit being a. I was saying to myself, you gotta quit being a. You gotta stand up and fucking fix this and do it right. And I just. I could not do that to my kids, man. There's just no way. So. Yeah, so that lady, that book. If I could meet that seal sometime, I'd freaking love to tell him thanks. Because that definitely.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, I got a feeling something's gonna happen after this releases. It always does. Yeah. What about drinking, drugs, anything like that?

[Chris Bayless]

No, no. You never felt like I used to drink, I drunk. You know, in that culture. I was a 14 beers and three shots guy, you know, And I'm not a. I'm not a big dude, but I could do that, still get on Harley and right away. But I. I don't do that anymore. That's been. I do. If I do one or two beers, it's a big night night and I'm in bed at 8:30. I enjoy my grass in the backyard. Yeah, it's. It's a different. I. I actually got a job. I do frame my frustration on old like Willys Jeeps. My father kind of got me into it and so I do that kind of in honor of him. He's passed. And I work with a guy that actually, Mel knows him, but I. I arrested him a while back for Hob's act robbery. And I ran into him after he did about four and a half, five years, ran into him. He was in the halfway house and he had to get a job to be in the halfway house. And it's part of his parole. So we run into him. He was managing a restaurant bar. Tina and I just, my wife had gone in to just get a sandwich with some friends and there he was standing there and I was like, ricky, you're out. He goes, chris, I am. I'm like. So I go, well, how you doing, brother? And he goes, I'm doing good. And I go, you look good, you look great. You're working out. He was a big kid. He goes, yeah, yeah, I'm back to working out. I go, you're at the halfway house. He goes, yeah. I go, what are you doing now? He goes, well, he goes, he was an idiot savant mechanic. Like never formally trained, but could wrench on any car, any Harley. He was unbelievable mechanic as well. He goes, a friend of mine's doing me a solid older guy. He's given me a shop area as I'm setting up a shop. I'm just going to work on cars. I go, that's freaking great, man. I go, good for you. He goes, yeah. He goes. I go, we good? I go, because we're in a restaurant now and you know. He goes, no, we're. We're more than good, dude. He goes, I changed my life because I'm going to do things differently. And he goes, for all the shit I did before I went to jail on your thing. He said, if I just do this five years and get out, I'm good. And I'm like, very cool. So fast forward a couple years. My dad blew up the motor on his Jeep. So I called up Mel and I said, you remember Ricky? He's like, yeah, I talked to Ricky every now and then. I'm like, he was a guy from the neighborhood kind of guy. I said, think there's any Hard feelings. I go, I got this jeep that I'm looking at working on. I don't have enough room in my garage to pull the motor out and take the tub off. I'm going to redo the whole thing. He's like, call him. So I called him Ricky, and he's like, fuck, call him. Bring it. So I trailer it out there, we put it in his garage. He takes the engine out within like 15 minutes, figures out what's wrong with it. It's gotta be rebuilt. Pulls all the pistons and crank off, and he goes, you're pretty good with a wrench. He goes, I go, well, I'm retired. I'm looking for shit to do. He goes, brother. He goes, I'll clean a part off my. Over here in the corner. He goes, you just want to bring cars in a wrench on them. He goes, you can come anytime time. So I just started, you know, a couple days, and then pretty soon I was like, oh, I like coming here and wrenching on cars and, you know, just. There's a solace of just building something, you know, And. And we talk about. He. It's funny because he talks about, you never would have got me for this. I go, I knew you were doing that. He's like, no way. Because if I had done this, would you got me? I go, no. But he's. He's one of those guys. He's a lot like. It's a lot like Mel. He's. He's worked seven days a week, 365 days a year since he got out. And I'm impressed by not only his commitment to staying out of trouble, but also just how he's living his life. He's just. He's a good. He's a good man. He takes care of people. He's just. There's people that come in there. He's got a shop that. Excuse me. No big marquee, but people that are maybe struggling with the amount of money they have to get something fixed, and they've got a newer car and it's going to be 1500, you know, or $2000. He goes, let me take. I'll take care of it. And he does it. Does it on the cheap. And he's just. He's a good guy. It's a good guy. So I bid. That's. I go, that's my little place of solace. I get my. My wrench out, take a few motors apart. Yeah, it's. It's awesome. It's good.

[Sean Ryan]

Good for you, man.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah. So I was at 56 is when I. I could go to 57. But at 56, I was like, after the Cleveland thing, just. I'm like, you know what? I'm good. I've 30 years. I'm all done now. I'm good.

[Sean Ryan]

Was a hell of a ride.

[Chris Bayless]

It was. I don't think I changed a thing. Well, maybe a couple things. But I like very much where I'm at now, I think. You know, it was funny. I went. Mel had a. He was on social media at the time when I retired. You know, he's big social media devotionals, you know, second chance. Always stay in a fight. You know, not physical fight, but stay in a fight to do better. And there was a little kid. His father had reached out. His kid had leukemia and he was on his last chemotherapy coming up. And so his dad reaches out to Melanie and says, my son follows you on Instagram or whatever. I'm not on anything. So I could. Couldn't even tell you what platform it was that he was on. But he goes, my son loves your devotionals and he loves, like your. Your second chance and don't give up. He's been fighting leukemia. He goes, his last chemo's coming up, like this Friday or next Friday or something. He goes, any way you could call him? Or. He goes, well, typical. Well, I'll be in Chicago that weekend. I go, so I'll come up a day early. He goes, you might. And my buddy Chris will pick us up. The guy that arrested me, pick us up at the airport, will come. Absolutely. Where we're at, he's like, well, he gets his last treatment at like 2 o'. Clock. And I'm like. And Mel's like, great. Calls me. I'm like, you want to meet this kid? I go, absolutely. So we go over and we sit down with this little guy. And when he came in, it was his last chemo treatment. So I don't know if you've ever been with anybody that's had cancer, but the last treatment, I mean, you ring the bell and you're pretty beat up after all that poison going through your system. So this little kid comes in, looked sad, and then he sees Mel and he's like smiling and he's like. He's like, oh, Mel. He started. Mel's like, hey, I've heard all about you. You played baseball. And Mel had the whole kid's whole Bible. He's talking to him and telling him stuff. And Hulk Hogan had sent him some autographed pictures and he had a Little thing from Hogan, like stay in a fight, you know? So he'd done all this stuff for this little kid. So we were only supposed to stay about 45 minutes or an hour. We ended up being there, like four and a half, five hours. By the end of it, I'm crying, Mel's crying, crying. His parents are crying. You know, it's just. It's just a great moment for this little guy. So at this time is right when I was retiring and I was. I was having the problems in the basement. And I never told Mel that I'd been diagnosed with anything or that I had some issues, but he knew that. He goes, what's going on with you? And so I told him, after we met with this little guy, I was driving him to the airport, and I said, well, I said, brother, I said, man, I don't even know if it's all worthwhile, bro. I said, I did so much battle damage, my kids, my family, myself. I'm like, I don't think it was worth it. So typical Mel. As you met him, he's popping a stick of gum in his mouth. He's got his bag, and we're pulling up to the terminal. He goes, let me tell you something, dude. He goes, if God's only plan was for you to be an ATF agent, do all your shit, arrest me, put me in jail, I changed my life. I come out, I do all this other stuff. I meet this young man who's suffering from cancer, and we gave him five hours where he's happy because he got an autographed picture of Hulk Hogan. He goes, it's all worthwhile. It's God's plan. He goes, and who the are you to decide what God's plan's about? And I was like. And he gets out of the truck. He goes, I'll see you next week. I'm like, okay. And he left. And I was like, that was that kind of. Of universe switch, where it's like, maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. You know, all this stuff is a gift.

[Sean Ryan]

It's a good way to look at it.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah. So that's when Nel introduced me to his pastor, his old pastor, that's just salt of the earth guy, Pastor Steve. This Guy was turned 50, and he wanted to bench 500 pounds on his 50th birthday, so he did. Holy fuck. So he's that guy Guy. He's his. He's just a monstrous guy, but I love him, man. He's. He's helped me come a Long way in my walk with the Lord. As with Mel. He's just one of those guys. That guy never gave up on Mel. From 50. He would pray for him all the time. Mellie said he. The pastor told me. He goes, I. I page that big lug at like, 2 o' clock in the morning. I knew he was out doing. I page him. I love you, You. I'm praying for you. You know, it was like, wow, like right now. So he never quit, and he never gave up. So, man, just being in that universe of people that are. That. Not only that, you know, they show the glory to God and the peace that you get from. From having that in your life, I really. I'm just very happy that I have it.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm happy for you.

[Chris Bayless]

Thank you, brother. You're there, bro. I've listened to you talking. I've. I've. I. I know you're. You seem to be maybe on the front end, like you're coming into it, coming into your faith. It's easy to lose sometimes. Understood. But you're getting there, brother. Thank you. You are. You're a good man. You know it.

[Sean Ryan]

When is the first time you met Mel? Not. Not at the airport after he got out of prison or before?

[Chris Bayless]

First time I met him was right after his attorney told us in the courtroom, because he's been out of the club for four years. He'll just plead to his shit, and he wants to be done. And the U.S. attorney's like, that's great, but he's got to come in for a proffer. He's got to sit down and spell it all out. So that's when we first talked. That's when I took him to the bathroom when he was all chained up, and he's like, fuck, dude. I go, brother. I go, this is just a speed bump in the road of life. Just a speed bump, man. You'll get through it. He's like, jerry. He goes, I'm looking at 24 years, dude. I said, well? I go, but you're doing the right thing. You're minimizing your exposure by cooperating and coming in on yourself and pleading guilty. So you're gonna get credit for that. I go, that's for you. That's the best you could do. He goes, you got me? I go, we got you. He's like, okay, how about after prison? You know, it's so funny. I think I got him at the airport when he got released. He goes, hey, can you pick me up? The marshals are going to drop me at the airport. And he goes, I got nothing. He goes, I want to kind of surprise my mom. And I don't want to call anybody from Chicago that I know that I'm coming home because one, I don't want any of the degenerates coming. I don't want. I go, yeah, I'll pick you up. So I scooped him and. And drove him to his mom's house and sat down. So we had his mom.

[Sean Ryan]

Of course, this is right after prison.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, right when he got out after his four.

[Sean Ryan]

You're his first call.

[Chris Bayless]

Yeah, he called me. Yeah. Holy shit. Yep, yep. So it's kind of funny. Yeah. So I picked him up and his mom, of course we had to eat right away. Her mom's like. Like this tall little Italian lady. Yeah, funny. So she cooked us up a great lunch. We ate.

[Sean Ryan]

Not even. Awkward, huh?

[Chris Bayless]

No. You know what, that I kind of knew Mel before I knew Mel. When he was locked up, I would listen to his prison calls because you get a lot of information. Like guys will be. They all know it's recorded, but you'll have they make statements and say that you can use against them all the time. So back in the day when he was locked up on the state and the federal stuff, I would listen to all his jail calls. And it was always interesting that I would hear how he talked to the criminal community. Then I heard how he talked to his friends and his family. And you could see that he wasn't rode 24 7. He was rowed with this crew and he was somebody else with this crew. And I was like, I didn't really expect that. I mean, everybody's got a mom. Every mobster's got a mom, you know, but it was different because he wouldn't allow his friends to get anywhere near the club. Like he had some pipe hitting friends that. Personal friends, but he would not let those guys. He goes, nope, nope, not for you. So he wouldn't let him anywhere near it. So I was like, okay. So there was. I could tell there was a difference. And then like I said, he'd been out for four years and was living his life when we got him. Him. So.

[Sean Ryan]

Both of you guys seem like you've changed a lot.

[Chris Bayless]

Oh yeah, yeah. Cuz if he was on, we would have smelled that out than the first. He would have got right back into it. If he. And there's no reason he did. He couldn't have. He would have given him the patch right back. He could have gone right back into the mix or, you know, he Knew, like I said, enough criminals in the community. He could have gone back to whatever life he wanted to go back to with any one of them, you know, being a major player. But he didn't. I'm like, right on. But he. Yeah, he's. He's a good friend. Right on.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, we got one last section there.

[Chris Bayless]

Okay.

[Sean Ryan]

So we got this new thing we're doing called the Hot Question. Okay, so Claude, same AI program where

[Chris Bayless]

you got all that other information. Yep. Okay.

[Sean Ryan]

We asked Claude to give us an incredible question for Mel the other day, and today we had it scraped the entire Internet for everything that's out there on you. And here's what it came up with. So here's the question. What's something people don't understand about infiltrating biker gangs? Gangs that could get you killed instantly if you mess it up. And what's the closest you've ever come to getting exposed and killed?

[Chris Bayless]

The thing not to do is show disrespect to anybody, membership wise. If you're new and you show up on the set and you disrespect or you act like you're all that in a bag of chips, you'll get your ass beat in very short order. So knowing the protocol and knowing how to act, as far as coming close on the killing part, from a biker standpoint, probably coming close to being killed happened. I found out about it after the fact, more so than at the time. I knew there were times where the allies were looking to get us and that it would be a problem. So there were very. There were close times then, but it was well beyond anything I knew at the time. Time. And the realization of that later was very hard.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, what is the. How do you ride in the formation?

[Chris Bayless]

Well, it's usually president, vice president, road captain, you know, enforcer. There's like a little. Depends on the club. Have different. So they lead the pack. You're going to have blockers that right next to the plaque. So if you're running a whole line of bikes through a town, blockers right up on either side of the pack and they block that intersection or corner so cars can't interrupt the club thing. They were coming out of the pack after Monty's funeral from the funeral home when I was doing security at the gate at the Hills Henchman clubhouse in Rockford, and some guy cut them into the pack and they ended up shooting the guy and dumping like five rounds. And then I've got the gate and I can hear these guys flying up. I see these guys like this, you know, I open the gate up, and they run a car in and jump out. Guns go flying in different directions, and everybody hunkers down and just sits there watching TV like they didn't do anything. Police cars flying all over the place. I just shut the gate and nothing happened. So cutting bikers off will definitely get you killed in a heartbeat. So. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

And then, last thing, break down some gang terminology for us. What are some common terms and slang that were being used on the streets?

[Chris Bayless]

I think the street vernacular, we always call it, like, straps, bangers, thumpers. Murk them. I'm gonna kill them. So guns are straps. Bangers, thumpers, hammers. You're gonna bang. Hammers, you're gonna shoot somebody. Gonna murk them. You're gonna murk them. Gonna put them down. Gonna put him down. Gonna get him to bow down. That will bow down. That means basically, you got the gun on him. And look, the guy wanted me to do. In Cleveland, you gotta bow down. So that would be stuff I like. You know, they've got. Bikers have different terms for old ladies. Property of. You know, you might have an old lady that's property of the club or property of a certain member. You know, they do a lot of that. So it's kind of the street vernacular, but it's almost. It transcends just, you know, bikers or street gangs. You know, same terminology. Licks. If you're gonna hit a lick, I'm gonna get down on a lick. You're gonna do a robbery. You know, I'm gonna hit that lick. I'm rip that off. I'm gonna tear it off them. Like that means I'm gonna rob them. So that's. That's kind of the street vernacular, I guess, if you will.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you miss it?

[Chris Bayless]

Sometimes I. You know, it's funny. I. I get to. And ats been very nice into having me back to help teach at the academy and teach some field operations and undercover. So I get to dip my toe and. And look at some. Maybe some hard chargers. Some guy. We got some guys now, man, it's like being a father and your son just freaking hit the home run and. Or freaking, you know, won the super bowl or some. Or threw the touchdown pass. When you see a lot what these guys have accomplished and what they've done and how they protected themselves, how they've saved their fellow agents and shootings and stuff and robberies and, man, it's just. You get you proud that, you know, man, these guys are. These guys are still jerking their. And Go to work.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Bayless]

You know, you get excited for them, you know, but then I get to go home, and like I said, my grass is nice in the backyard, and I get to wrench on my Jeep, so I get that momentary, like. Yeah. Even though I'm not in it at all, I. Any level, so. Right. Oh, man. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

You want to end in a prayer?

[Chris Bayless]

Absolutely.

[Sean Ryan]

You want to lead it?

[Chris Bayless]

Okay. All right, let's do it. Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to fellowship with Sean, to talk about you, Lord, to talk about your grace, your forgiveness, how you interact in our lives and make it better. And those that come to you and know you and lean into you, you just. It just makes life so much better. Thank you for this time and opportunity, Lord. We. All the. All the glory goes to you, Lord. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, Chris.

[Chris Bayless]

All right, brother.

[Sean Ryan]

I know we're missing a lot, but that is a hell of a story, man. It was an honor, dude.

[Chris Bayless]

My honor, man. I. I sit in his chair. I feel like a poser. And you've had Cody, you've had some just amazing people that have sat in his chair. Brother, I'm very humbled to. To have the opportunity to talk to you, so thank you. I appreciate it, too.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, you're one of them.

[Chris Bayless]

Well, thank you, bro. Appreciate that.

[Sean Ryan]

God bless, man.

[Chris Bayless]

Bless you, bro. Foreign

[Sean Ryan]

no matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.

[Chris Bayless]

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[Sean Ryan]

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[Chris Bayless]

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[Chris Bayless]

Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.