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The daily press is the evil principle of the modern world, and time will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clearness. The capacity of the newspaper for degeneration is sophistically without limit, since it can always sink lower and lower in its choice of readers. At last it will stir up all those dregs of humanity which no state or government can control.
— Sören Kierkegaard, The Last Years: Journals 1853-55
The best thing about the Angels is that we don’t lie to each other. Of course that don’t go for outsiders because we have to fight fire with fire. Hell, most people you meet won’t tell you the truth about anything.
— Zorro, the only Brazilian Hell’s Angel
It was part of the cover story.
— Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., explaining why he wapped the press with a bogus explanation of the Bay of Pigs Invasion
Politicians, like editors and cops, are very keen on outrage stories, and State Senator Fred Farr of Monterey County is no exception. He is a leading light of the Carmel-Pebble Beach set and no friend of hoodlums anywhere, especially gang rapists who invade his constituency. His reaction to the Monterey headlines was quick and loud. Farr demanded an immediate investigation of the Hell’s Angels and all others of that breed, whose lack of status caused them to be lumped together as other disreputables. In the cut-off world of big bikes, long runs and classy rumbles, this new, state-sanctioned stratification made the Hell’s Angels very big. They were, after all, Number One — like John Dillinger.
Attorney General Thomas C. Lynch, then new in his job, moved quickly to mount an investigation of sorts. He sent questionnaires to more than a hundred sheriffs, district attorneys and police chiefs, asking for information on the Hell’s Angels and other disreputables. He also asked for suggestions as to how the law might deal with them.
Six months went by before all the replies were condensed into a fifteen-page report that read like a plot synopsis of Mickey Spillane’s worst dreams. But in the matter of solutions it was vague. The state was going to centralize information on these thugs, urge more vigorous prosecution, put them all under surveillance whenever possible, etc.
A careful reader got the impression that even if the Angels were the monsters they seemed to be, there was not much the cops could do — and that indeed Mr. Lynch was well aware he’d been put, for political reasons, on a pretty weak scent.
The report was colorful, interesting, heavily biased and consistently alarming — just the sort of thing to make a clanging good item for the national press. There was plenty of mad action, senseless destruction, orgies, brawls, perversions and a strange parade of innocent victims that, even on paper and in careful police language, was enough to tax the credulity of the dullest police reporter. The demand was so heavy in newspaper and magazine circles that the Attorney General’s office had to order a second printing. Even the Hell’s Angels got a copy; one of them stole mine. The heart of the report was a section titled Hoodlum Activities, a brief account of outlaw activities dating back for almost a decade. To wit:
On April 2, 1964, a group of eight Hell’s Angels invaded the home of an Oakland woman, forcing her male friend out of the house at gunpoint and raping the woman in the presence of her three children. Later that same morning, female companions of the Hell’s Angels threatened the victim that if she co-operated with the police, she would be cut on the face with a razor. . .
Early on the morning of June 2, 1962, it was reported that three Hell’s Angels had seized a 19-year-old woman in a small bar in the northern part of Sacramento and while two of them held her down on the barroom floor, the third removed her outer clothing. The victim was menstruating at the time, her sanitary napkin was removed and the third individual committed cunnilingus upon her. . .
Early on the morning of October 25, 1964, nine Hell’s Angels and two of their female companions were arrested by Gardena police and sheriffs officers after a riot call had been received from a Gardena bar. Police reported the group started ripping up the whole place after someone had splashed a mug of beer over one of the group. The bar was left in shambles, and pool tables covered with beer and urine. . .