Greensboro man recalls undercover work with biker gang - Biker Lifestyle - Motorcyles

Posted: 04-17-2005 14:39

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4-6-05

By Stan Swofford, Staff Writer
News & Record
It was Christmas 1999, his mother in Greensboro had just died, and Billy Queen had never felt so alone and confused.

He wasn’t even sure who he really was, or even who he wanted to be. Was he federal agent William “Billy” Queen, the Grimsley High School and Guilford College graduate and former High Point cop who infiltrated Southern California’s Mongols, the most violent outlaw biker gang in America? Or was he Billy St. John, the name the Mongols used for their long-haired, beer-swilling, hard-riding gang brother?
His life depended on making the right decision.
The Mongols loved him and they told him so. Gang members “Evel,” “Rancid,” “Rocky,” “Domingo” and others in the San Fernando chapter stood in line to hug him when he returned to Los Angeles after burying his mother. “Sorry about your momma, Billy,” Evel said. “I love you, brother.”

His colleagues in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had not even acknowledged that his mother had died. Queen wanted to tell his Mongol brothers the truth, end the investigation and “just climb on my bike and ride away.” He came “that close,” he said, almost touching together his forefinger and thumb.
Queen was able to deal with his grief-induced vulnerability just in time. “The reality was yes, they loved Billy St. John, but they would kill Billy Queen.”

Want to go?
Billy Queen will be signing copies of “Under and Alone” at 7 p.m. Thursday at Barnes & Noble at Friendly Center.

That reality jumps from the pages of “Under and Alone,” the book Queen wrote about the more than two years he lived as a Mongol — from March 1998 to April 2000. He spent those years winning the gang’s trust and affection, earning his Mongol “colors” while secretly collecting evidence of crimes ranging from rape, murder, assault and theft, to trafficking in narcotics and firearms, including machine guns. Queen’s investigation resulted in the convictions of 54 of the 350 Mongol gang members.
But the experience left him emotionally drained. There were times he was certain that the gang had discovered his identity and that he was about to be killed. There were times that he came within an instant of having to shoot Mongols just to prevent them from murdering or raping people. There were other times that he genuinely enjoyed their friendship and returned it.
“If I had it to do over again,” he said, “I wouldn’t do it.”
Officials in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, amazed at his experiences, said he should write a book.
Queen, 55, quit the ATF after 20 years to do just that. He wrote the book himself. He sold the movie rights for six figures, although he declined to say exactly how much, after Mel Gibson expressed interest in it. The film, which is expected to be shot later this year and released in 2006, will be directed by Antoine Fuqua and star Gibson as Queen.
Queen, who approved the screenplay of his book, said he had several discussions with Gibson about his experiences with the Mongols.

Queen lives in Guilford County. He declined to say where specifically because he has been told that the Mongols would like to see him dead. They have a history of killing or maiming witnesses who testified against them. Queen is also concerned for the safety of his two children, who live with his former wife. There’s a Mongol chapter in Georgia, he noted, just a few hours’ bike drive up Interstate 85.
Queen’s 5-foot-7 inches rides on a stocky, well-built frame topped off by a baseball cap with white ATF letters. He’s in good shape and needed to be. He was 15 or 20 years older than most Mongols, but he was still expected to participate in numerous fights and barroom brawls during his years as a Mongol.
Queen has loved motorcycles as long as he can remember and he has always loved law enforcement. His dad was an ATF agent who put bootleggers and other criminals in jail, and Queen, as a student at Ragsdale in Jamestown, and then Grimsley where he graduated, pretty much assumed that he would be doing the same some day.

First, however, he went to Vietnam as part of a Special Forces intelligence unit in 1971. He returned almost a year later with shrapnel in his leg and a Silver Star. He enrolled at Guilford College and earned a degree in justice administration, and then joined the High Point Police Department.
Queen’s dream was to become an ATF agent, like his dad. He joined the U.S. Border Patrol to become a federal officer, to better position himself once an ATF opening came up. That happened in about a year and a half.
Queen found that he had a knack for undercover work. That talent and his background in military weapons served him well during undercover operations in the militia, Klan, Nazi and Skinhead movements. In 1998, a confidential informant told the ATF she could get an undercover agent inside the Mongols. The gang had been terrorizing Southern California, and the ATF, Queen included, jumped at the chance.
Queen and his ATF handlers prepared carefully for the long haul, and it was good that they did. Although the Mongols could be stupid, Queen said, they also ran a remarkably sophisticated organized crime operation that they went to great lengths to protect.
That included making thorough background checks on Mongol “hang-arounds” and “prospects,” people who wanted to be Mongols. The ATF created a false past for Queen, including his alias, Billy St. John, and a criminal record back in Guilford County.
Steve Campbell, who had been his captain on the High Point Police Department, and ATF agents in Guilford County established phone numbers and stories to tell the Mongols if they called. They not only called, but hired a private detective to check out Queen, or “St. John,” as they knew him. His stories checked out.

But some of the Mongols remained suspicious, especially “Red Dog,” the gang’s obnoxious, crank-crazed, full-body-tattooed national sergeant-at-arms. Red Dog’s suspicion boiled over into dislike, and he made life miserable for Queen. As a prospect, Queen was required to take everything the Mongols dished out. That included Red Dog’s vicious blows to the stomach.
“It doubled me over,” Queen said. “I couldn’t say anything. I just tried to imagine how good it would feel when I saw him led away in cuffs.”
Queen gained the respect and trust of many of the Mongols when he jumped between the Mongol president, Domingo, and a drunk in a biker bar in Tujunga, Calif. Queen said the drunk had been “mad-dogging,” or glaring, at Domingo.
“When Domingo demanded to know 'What the ---- are you looking at?’ the drunk started to swing, and bam, I decked him,” Queen said.
Other Mongols kicked him with their steel-pointed boots as Queen struggled to get him outside. He finally succeeded and the guy got up and ran, Queen said.
As Queen reentered the bar, however, another drunk, a big one, elbowed Domingo, hard. Queen grabbed him by the neck and threw him up against the wall. “That’s when he hit me and pulled out a big Bowie knife.”
The man swung the big knife at Queen again and again as the agent backpedaled. Queen did not have a gun with him but he knew other Mongols did, and he yelled, “Shoot him! Shoot him.” He said that if he had had a gun he would have shot the man. One of the Mongols knew the man and finally was able to get him to put away the knife.
After that incident, most of the Mongols warmed to Queen because he had protected the president. But not Red Dog. Queen was certain Red Dog, and other Mongols, were about to kill him one day at their makeshift firing range deep in an orange grove. “Red Dog began screaming at me, 'How long was your (police) academy, Billy? How long was your ------- academy?’ and I knew they had made me. When he ordered me to turn around and go put up some targets, I thought they were going to shoot me in the head. I thought I’d never see my kids again.”
But it was just a bluff, part of Queen’s initiation. The Mongols not only accepted him but made him secretary-treasurer of the chapter, giving him access to the gang’s financial records involving drug and weapons deals and extortion.

Queen’s relationship with the Mongols evolved into a strange kind of camaraderie. He found that he actually liked spending his spare time with them rather than with his ATF colleagues. He grins with pride even today when he talks about how the Mongols could frighten the hated Hells Angels into submission by merely staring them down.
But Queen missed his children, and he realized how distant he had become from his family when he took his children to a school function and saw that he frightened and repulsed parents and teachers.
His appearance also shocked people in North Carolina when he visited, twice for funerals; one for L.J. Boyd, his former lieutenant on the High Point Police Department, and one for his mother.
“We were just amazed,” said Rick Brewer, his friend and former colleague with the High Point police. “We told him he needed to stop doing that stuff before he got killed.”
Queen knew that was true. He slipped away from the Mongols one spring day in 2000 as hundreds of federal and state agents began arresting Mongols and seizing dozens of illegal guns, cocaine and stolen motorcycles.
Queen didn’t see his former Mongol buddies again until months later, when he testified against them in court. They looked at him, not with hatred, but with hurt, he said.
Queen said he braced himself when “Doc,” the Mongols’ national president, stopped him in the hall of the courthouse. “He said, 'Admit it, Billy. You loved riding with us, didn’t you?’
“And you know something? He was right. I did.”

Stan Swofford at sswofford@news-record.com

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