PART OF THE CREW: Former Waco Fire Lt. Kevin Fisk, (3rd from left)
Crawford – In the laconic order, 66th Judicial District Lee Harris dismissed the lawsuit against the Waco Fire Department and other city officials last December by agreement of both of the parties.
A Civil Service Commission unanimous decision, he was ordered to have a psychological examination by a psychiatrist of the city’s choosing, even though his personal care giver had signed off stating he was mentally fit for duty.
FIRST THINGS FIRST – A MAN’S GOT TO TAKE CARE OF FAMILY
He was obliged to retire upon his reinstatement – with no status as a finder of fact or as a peace officer – to the job he formerly performed, after he proved his sanity. “We have already had mediation and as part of such, I agreed to retire” – on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 2016, Armistice Day.
Apparently, there is not much regard for seeking the facts in such cases, and it’s a statewide policy.
He went on to say, “State law isn’t friendly to whistle blowers, and with a cap of $250,000 (in compensatory damages), had we gone to court (assuming I won the case) I would have likely walked away owing more than I could have been awarded.”
And then, he apologized for not mentioning the case had been dismissed before we failed to check our facts. Nice guy, but that one’s on the house. It’s a reporter’s job to check it out – first.
First mistake The Legendary ever made in his life.
“…I didn’t mean to mislead you to think this was ongoing; but instead I meant to give you an avenue by which you might be able to obtain additional information.
“I was interested in your comment regarding (Fire Marshal) Vranich authoring something in the report. The last I knew, Vranich had not authored anything in that case. Should one request open records (on FD records/reports), specifically asking for ‘any/all investigative narratives by any/all investigators;’ might be beneficial (that is if the city will release them.”
When asked several weeks ago if Fisk retired, Vranich refused to answer the question, saying, “He is unemployed here. That is all there is to it.” He made it clear he is answering no further questions.
Said Fisk, “I have no way of knowing if my last narrative in that case (added to case report after I made a report to Waco Police Department Internal Affairs and had that investigation taken from me) remains; but if it hasn’t been altered/deleted yet; I expect likelihood it soon will be. I’m not sure how one would know otherwise; unless the request also included ‘modification history of the record’ as well. (Hint)“
Hillsboro – A District Court of Appeals at El Paso found no reversible error in affirming the guilty verdict a Hill County jury handed down in the shotgun murder of a teen-aged girl whose father shot her in a darkened pasture during the terror-filled hours before dawn on July 23, 2012.
Testimony presented at the trial of Edward Odell Collins of Whitney showed he was under the influence of methamphetamines when he and his children fled his rural house at the corner of FM933 and 1713 after he saw what he thought was a gang of people stalking his property with flashlights and heard an object strike the side of the dwelling.
He and his three children drove across the property to a wooded area in his van before alighting and hiding in the brush at a fence line.
When Collins heard a muffled scream behind him, he turned and fired his shotgun in the dark, only to learn the blast killed his daughter Judith, 14, a high school student.
Collins and his two other children hid in the woods until dawn, when they left the child’s body behind and drove to the Sheriff’s Office at Hillsboro. Deputies returned to the property with his son and found Judith’s body and two cell phones with the batteries removed.
An earlier call to the 911 operator brought lawmen to a convenience store named the Hitchin’ Post which was operated by his father. He told them he had no knowledge of a disturbance or a home invasion. The call to the emergency operator had failed due to a dropped signal, according to reports.
Collins drew a 40-year jury sentence for murder in the trial, which he appealed on the grounds that there was “insufficient evidence for a guilty verdict, a lack of jury instructions regarding self defense, defense of third persons, and mistake of fact, and the appointment of a pro tem prosecutor to represent the state” in the case presented against him, according to the appeals court’s opinion.
The panel found no error and affirmed the jurors’ verdict and the sentence they chose.
Testimony revealed that Collins heard gunshots and saw people running around with flashlights. He lost his glasses and admitted that he suffered from poor vision when he fired three shots at the flashlight images, though he saw no persons.
Collins “told the investigator that he heard a yelp, and thought whoever it was with these flashlights, had circled around behind him.”
The shotgun pellets punctured his daughter’s heart and liver; she died within moments, according to a statement given by his son.
Though they returned to the store, he told his children not to mention to his father that he had shot their sister and killed her.
McLennan DA Abel Reyna sought interlocal agreement with all law enforcement agencies to reveal the names of informants in 2013
Austin – Like the first puff of wind in the ocean separating Africa from the Caribbean, the coming storm signal hit the legislative opening day with the quiet resolve of an autumn phenomenon.
The only conditions necessary for the black leather-clad knights and dames of the road to level a full frontal attack on Abel Reyna’s re-election is for qualified candidates to step forward.
Like the fateful ad that attracted the attention of Richard M. Nixon at his law office job as an Orange County associate, the word is out: WANTED – talented young attorney with the ability to operate a dynamic law office in downtown Waco, TX, serving the People of the State of Texas as Criminal District Attorney.
It’s not the first time it’s happened. Reyna fended off a serious conservative challenge in 2013 when he sought an interlocal agreement with law enforcement agencies throughout his jurisdiction to make a routine disclosure of the identities of confidential informants in all felony cases.
The results have been mixed, to say the least.
Seasoned road warriors and legislative motorcycle enthusiasts from throughout the Lone Star State and points beyond are interested in ending profiling of their kind as criminals and outlaws.
They say over quiet meetings in Austin’s hotel lobbies, cocktail lounges and beer bars that the word is simple enough. Reyna has to go, but his replacement must first step forward and be counted.
“We will be glad to interview the candidates,” said one seasoned veteran of the biker wars, in town for the opening of the legislative session.
A number of candidates have made their desire for the job known in previous campaigns. Resources offered by two-wheeling policy enthusiasts include staffing boiler rooms, putting out yard signs, and attending campaign events.
It’s one campaign in many, but one that bikers are taking a keen interest in attending.
Valley Mills – Brittany Lannen on January 12 tendered a 30-day notice of resignation on behalf of her law firm, Diaz, Lannen, and Wright, as city attorney and prosecutor in this Bosque County city.
Ms. Lannen cited a ‘toxic’ environment in working with City Administrator William Lynn and the City Council.
“We feel that our advice, counsel, and resources have been rebuked and underutilized,” she wrote.
Mr. Lynn made a decision that a legal opinion provided by the firm was incorrect and proceeded in spite of their advice to authorize purchase of energy from a company without the approval of the Council. When informed, the governing body refused to pay for the legal advice, according to Ms. Lannen.
Mr. Lynn also requested the names of council members who have been asking questions or opposed to his leadership.
“We will not be used by the City Administrator to ‘inform’ on council members who do not agree with him,” Ms. Brannen concluded.
Al Cinek in a happier role as an impresario of two-wheel party time
West – Two bikers, both veteran impresarios of the biker boogie down culture of benefits, beer, blues, bike nights, and weekend bashes, tell it like it is.
It could have been them, but it wasn’t.
The disaster of Twin Peaks could have stricken their businesses, Al’s Tokio Store, and Jim Pechacek’s Motorcycle Shop at Axtel.
Both recall making a decision to “get out of it” before disaster struck.
Cinek’s century-old beer bar and grocery store was known to attract upwards of half a thousand bikers for its Musicians Reunions and various benefits, all of them sporting patches of rival clubs and peacefully having themselves a good time, minding their manners.
When the Bandidos’s rift with the Cossacks reared its head, Cinek recalls, and then he just trails off, looking into the middle distance.
“I saw that place where someone wrote Cossacks on the post of the front porch with a marker. I saw that Bandido go by and hit it with his elbow.”
He shakes his head, looks at his boot tips and shrugs.
“I got out of it.”
But he’s not through. He gestures in an encompassing manner, indicating the entire building of the American Legion Post 121 in Elm Mott. “It could have been here,” he says, meaning the ill-fated COC&I meeting where bullets flew and blood spilled on May 17, 2015. “They wanted to have it here. We told them, no way.”
Quizzed further, he recalls it was a decision based on common sense, the commodity that the management of the next door neighbor bar to Twin Peaks said the franchisee was sorely lacking by hosting bike nights and club meetings where the rivals could get at each other. It’s in the first paragraph of their lawsuit against the parent company and the franchisee.
Jim Pechacek’s shop has been the scene of biker revels for decades, with bikers camped out for the weekend in a pasture beside his place of business. He was the head of the local chapter of the Texas Motorcycle Rights Association, a lobbying organization with deep ties to legislative functions at Austin.
A staunch member of the Confederation of Clubs and Independents, TMRA began to flounder with the death of its founder, Sputnik.
“When the Bandidos got involved, started collecting dues, I said the hell with it,” recalls Pechacek. He lets go with a string of expletives regarding their violent encounter at Twin Peaks on May 17, 2015, blaming the media and lawmen with an entirely negative message.
“They try to make the rest of us look like them,” he fairly shouts, standing behind the cash register of his store. “Those guys aren’t like us. We work. We pay our bills. They lay out, pimp out their old ladies. It’s not the same thing, but everyone is charged with the same offense,”
Cinek spoke just as harshly. “To be a Bandido, you don’t own your bike, your old lady – not even yourself.”
How does he know? “I asked them if it’s true,” he said. He nods vigorously. “It’s true.”
Both say they are cognizant of DA Abel Reyna’s strategy, that if he delays and delays and delays the prosecution of the 155 identical indictments he has obtained for engaging in organized criminal activity, sooner or later, the alleged offenders will cave in and plead out to a lesser offense, or accept the terms of a bargain.
Will that work with this crowd?
Pechacek shakes his head, adamantly, says, “No way!” Cinek appears not to hear, or to notice, or even to care. He is lost in his own thoughts.
Cinek remains impassive when quizzed about those prospects, diffident when he hears the news that some biker organizations such as Sons of Liberty Riders, M.C., riding out of the Mid-Cities and an active participant in the U.S. Defenders’ Legislative Strike Force, are planning to primary Reyna, the man who made the decision to arrest everyone based on whether they were wearing colors, or not.
The possibilities are very real, including boiler rooms, phone calls, yard signs, giving people rides to the polls, helping them register to vote, vote early, absentee – whatever it takes.
They both listen intently when told that the leadership of these clubs have declared they are motorcycle clubs, interested only in the benefits to enthusiasts through organized political action.
“What we saw,” says Cinek, recalling the shock of videos depicting the mortal combat of biker against biker, fighting with various weapons, many cut down by police sniper fire, “they could have cleared 20 acres and put a big fence around it, then told them to fight it out, to the finish.Why didn’t they do that?”
At that point of the interview, Pechacek let go with another string of profanity, something that is very rare with this rather refined man of the road. It is the only time in many years I have ever seen him get excited about anything. Anything! The guy is a rock.
He gesticulates, raises his voice, his face colors as he says, “Hell, they arrested mom and pops, veterans, Christian Riding Clubs, just anybody!”
To conclude, both make the universal sign of the Texas prairies, the one that does not translate from the Spanish, “¿Quien sabe?”
Who knows.
The gist of the conversations of these two is the same. What they do know is that something they grew up taking for granted has now slipped away into the past. Both men are not only shocked, nearly two years later, but outraged.
A barrel race at Jim Pechacek’s annual spring fling in Axtel.
Waco – Toby Gager, 25, was sitting on the couch at his mother’s house in Hewitt on December 1, 2015 when he suddenly remarked he had touched her grand daughter in an inappropriate way.
Disgusted, Trish Gager told him that if he didn’t phone the police, she would.
She had found him crying, not an unusual thing for her son, who is autistic, and was just diagnosed after 14 months incarceration in the Jack Harwell Detention Center with Asperger’s Syndrome, a rarefied form of autism.
Following an extended phone conversation with an officer, other police came and took him away, and that was the last his family has seen of him outside of brief 15-minute video visits since then.
It took three years of dealing with MH-MR officials to get a diagnosis that points to why her son has been unable to keep a stable address, a job, or a relationship throughout his young life.
Now, she says her reaction to his outburst – in hindsight – is that she acted with too much haste. She has little faith in the charge of indecency with a child with contact. When her grand daughter and her daughter were examined by mental health workers, neither displayed any sign of sexual trauma.
She stood on the steps of the McLennan County Courthouse on Thursday, protesting the fact that she is unable to communicate with his court-appointed attorney, Jonathan Sibley, who, she says, never returns phone calls and has told her that since it’s an open case and hasn’t been adjudicated as yet, it is impossible to obtain the charging instrument, the affidavit of probable cause that accompanied the officer’s warrant of arrest, or any other detail regarding the alleged offense.
He has said only that the prosecution staff is offering a sentence of twelve years behind bars in return for a plea of guilty.
On a visit to the Hewitt Police Department, the staff said the same thing. They furnished only a bare bones report that an offense had taken place and that Toby Gager made the trip to jail in handcuffs to answer to the charge. Period.
According to the public face of the system, no further information is available.
In a lengthy interview, she aired her frustrations with the handling of the case, which, she says, the criminal justice system is inadequate to handle.
Waco – Though this article is about how three people – a mother and two of her children – died, while a third child suffered burns and smoke inhalation, and four firemen injuries on the job, it’s ultimately about how we the people live.
Nearly five years ago, on February 16, 2012, at about 7 p.m., a trailer near the west bank of the Brazos River on N. 19th St. burst into intense fire, involving the entire building in flames. When within three minutes firemen arrived, cooling water sprayed on the structure turned to steam and injured four of their number with scalding burns. They suffered burns from the flames and intense heat as they tried to fight their way through a window to save the victims.
A neighbor pulled one child, injured by burns and smoke, to safety. Ashley Dawn Rogers, 27, and two of her children, Gage Megginson, 8 months, and Madisyn Marie Megginson, 3, lost their lives in the sudden blaze that melted the aluminum of the structure into molten puddles.
Lead Arson Investigator Kevin Fisk lost his career as a result of his findings, the result of investigation that seems to be very unpopular with a conflicting set of investigators at the Waco Police Department. At the height of the controversy, executives of the Fire Department questioned his sanity, but backed away from their demands when they learned he had thorough documentation of many items suggesting criminal wrongdoing on the part of public officials material to the murder investigation. He retired in order to save the benefits he earned.
For the first time, he has agreed to speak on-mic about what he has termed a murder in which the chosen weapon was fire, the reasons he must be very careful of what he says, and the facts that clearly spell out a pattern of misfeasance on the part of police and prosecutors who appear to be extremely reluctant to bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice.
In this interview, he claims that the murders were carried out by the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.
Our next question: Did the members of the leadership of both police and fire departments apply pressure to Fisk to speed up, or slow down, or call off his investigation?
PRESSURE FROM ABOVE: The Old Drill Tower, Fire Dept.Headquarters
Waco – The beginning of the end of Lt. Kevin Fisk’s probe into the facts of a suspicious sudden blaze – a possible explosion – that killed three members of a single-mother family was information- driven, the central conflict the result of a double cross by the police detective in charge of the questionable death investigation and the department’s Public Information Officer, Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton.
The duo had agreed with Fisk at the beginning of the dual investigation that they would hold off releasing any further information to the public until the three had a chance to coordinate their statements.
As far as he knew, he, Fisk, was the only one in the Fire Marshal’s office conducting an investigation, and neither he had made any such statement, nor had Fire Marshal Kevin Vranich.
Nevertheless, the resulting conflict followed him through a number of previously reported and increasingly complicated evolutions until his resignation nearly five years later.
In the ensuing years, no one ran down the leads he had developed from interviews with witnesses willing to name names and offering corroborative evidence and testimony about a suspect. The best he knew, the police detective, John Rozysky, had placed the material in “property” without developing the evidence.
In this exclusive interview, Fisk begins by agreeing that the root of the problem is in the very fact of the information itself.
But the conflict is on two levels, or actually two separate streams of consciousness, and it’s an intricate series of events that are not all that easy to comprehend, though they are thoroughly documented by his records.
Fisk turned over to Vranich all his digital records, including witness statements, recordings, and information related to officer misconduct on a hard drive he acquired on his own when his file became too large for his computer. This he did on pain of being fired if he did not turn the information over by 5 pm that day. Vranich then transferred it onto a hard drive furnished by the City of Waco, and returned Fisk’s hard drive to him, undeleted, on October 14, 2014.
According to his legal advisor, Fisk declared, at that point, the information then became became his personal property and lost its status as confidential, the work product of an investigator involved in a criminal case.
When Fisk turned this device over to his attorney for safe-keeping, the man advised him it is thereby privileged by an attorney-client relationship.
On July 22, 2015, after Assistant City Attorney Judyth Benton “had already told a union attorney they were not going to and had no intention of seeking any fit-for-duty proceeding,” Fisk recalls from his records; “The mere knowledge that I had turned over the hard drive to my attorney led to the decision to place me on administrative leave pending a psychological evaluation.”
As he recalls, when Vranich asked him what was on his hard drive, he replied that it was none of his business. Why? “It was privileged information,” he said.
“I am giving you a direct order to tell me what is on that hard drive,” Vranich reportedly demanded. Again, Fisk demurred, saying it was a matter of attorney-client privilege, something sacrosanct in spite of his orders, direct or otherwise.
It is his central allegation that when this was learned, he was reinstated, and his records furthermore reflect that he was informed in no uncertain terms that it was just a matter of time before he would be dismissed for cause, triggering the loss of all benefits. In the period after these events, he began to rack up a large number of infractions of administrative rules, though he had no status as an investigator. In fact, he was ordered to assist with investigations of questionable fires.
He he been dismissed for cause, he would have lost all benefits accrued and owed him at that time, as well as facing the economic uncertainty of unemployment.
He chose to resign.
Since that time, though Swanton told media outlets at the time of the news report to KWTX and others that it could always be reopened, the murder probe has gone exactly nowhere.
Ashley Dawn Rogers (L) out for a lark with friends during a happier time
Waco – On this crisp winter morning – the fifth anniversary of a gruesome trailer explosion and unexplained fire that claimed the lives of a young woman and two of her children – firefighters are expressing their approval of this series of articles aimed at informing We The People of what happened, and how their public officials have acted to prevent Lt. Kevin Fisk from presenting the evidence of how fire was used as a murder weapon to silence Ashley Dawn Rogers and her children on February 16, 2012. Miraculously, a third child survived with injuries when a neighbor pulled him to safety through a breach in the flaming walls of the structure.
Four of these men who stand ready to sacrifice their lives in defense of We The People from conflagrations and other disasters both natural and felonious suffered inuries of burns and smoke inhalation as they fought desperately to save Ms. Rogers and her kids, goaded by her screams as she died in the intolerable heat and smoke of the conflagration that melted the aluminum siding and left the structure a smoldering platform on a steel frame within minutes.
A number of these men have taken the trouble to let Fisk know they think he is a “man’s man” to have allowed The Legendary to bring you the news of how high-ranking officials have taken it upon themselves to end his career as a fireman by questioning his sanity, trying to force him to seek psychological treatment and medication, and ending his job history 15 years prematurely.
In this article we bring you prima facie evidence of just how an Assistant City Attorney, Judith Benton, sought and received an Attorney General’s Opinion that ruled the fact that District Attorney Abel Reyna issued a written order disallowing any further presentation of evidence to Grand Juries of arson crimes prepared by Fisk during his career.
The Open Records Division first claimed that the letter authored by the chief law enforcement officer of this jurisdiction who made himself the complaining witness in the police massacre of Twin Peaks on May 17, 2015 by seizing control of the police investigation of that debacle, is subject to “attorney-client privilege.”
Upon appeal, she has claimed that it is part of a confidential personnel file that may not be revealed to We The People, even though state law dictates that it is our property, and she is the custodian of record. That decision is pending.
Said Fisk, “I would like to have the date of the letter to learn if it corresponds with the changes in standard operating procedures that exclude my being allowed to investigate fires of questionable origin.” That information will not be forthcoming, apparently.
We will never know, if Ms. Benton has her way.
In this exclusive interview, Fisk reveals how he learned of the existence of the letter in a conversation with Fire Chief Tatum, recently of Ft. Worth, himself a former arson investigator, who ended their visit by admitting, on mic, that as an “at-will” employee without civil service protection, he is playing with fire if he goes against the grain of Benton’s wishes and allows the letter to go on the record.
Said Tatum, who just relocated to Waco, “I just bought a house.” The two are heard to comisserate over the facts of the matter, exchange quotes of scripture, and part as friends, both vowing to stay in touch.
We bring you the interview and an audio capture of his conversation with Chief Tatum, unedited and unexpurgated:
In this updated report, we at The Legendary have repaired broken links to the documents stored on a remote cloud. They may now be downloaded in their entirety…
The Glock 27 is a sub-compact cop shop hot rod in .40 cal. S&W
Six Shooter Junction – No cop shop scandal with complications at the fire station would be complete without a gun, placed high in the story.
It’s the stuff of legends, the subject of Internal Affairs probes and Grand Jury investigations.
Just goes with the territory, and it’s no less true in the tale about the way Lt. Kevin Fisk wound up in a heap of trouble over how and why Ashley Dawn Rogers and her kids lost their lives on February 16, 2012 when her trailer house exploded in the sudden conflagration he says was ordered and carried out by the Texas Aryan Brotherhood, a prison gang with its roots in California and its fingers in the synthesis and sales of methamphetamine, auto theft and extortion.
Said Fisk during initial interviews with The Legendary, “They keep the cops and firemen fighting each other all the time – everywhere. They don’t want them to get together and start moving the same direction.”
One of the items to be herein discussed was at one time part of an Internal Affairs Division investigation derailed by former Fire Chief John Johnston and Fire Marshal Kevin Vranich in what Fisk came to think of as a “quid pro quo” arrangement with what he has described as multiple moving parts.
On October 1, 2014, Fisk had an appointment with an Internal Affairs investigator to go over his records and recollections regarding certain procedural irregularities in both departments, primarily where his investigation of the Ashley Dawn Rogers case interfered with the agenda of certain other detectives and command staffers.
The meeting was scheduled for a little after the noon hour, but when he arrived for work that morning, he was ordered to a conference room at department headquarters and confronted with an allegation of “critical incident stress,” something Vranich said amounted to an injury that was affecting his objectivity.
Fisk didn’t see it that way. He still says he was not injured, and he refused to fill out any workman’s compensation paperwork to that effect. The officials subsequently removed him from any active follow-up investigations of fires of questionable origin past the initial reports. He eventually wound up on administrative leave pending an psychiatric evaluation. By the time the dispute was resolved, Fisk claims, he was “determined by at least 5 medical professionals to be ‘fit for duty.'”
When he finally made it to his appointment at IAD, he learned that both Johnston and Vranich had been simultaneously summoned to Chief of Police Brent Stroman’s office, then visited the Risk Manager for further consultation about his status.
In the ensuing hassle that stretched into late 2016, he never got a chance to see his internal affairs allegations reach any real conclusion, but two documents leaked to The Legendary give a clear idea of which way the wind was blowing.
During a confusing period of administrative adjustment to the task, Vranich told the three other men to hold their payments of $75 each for the trade-in. One weapon belonged to Vranich himself. When an administrative staffer was asked about it, she expressed confusion, saying she knew the purchase to involve only weapons owned by the City of Waco.
Amid the the frustrations recorded in the paper trail, it emerged that Vranich completed and signed two documents regarding Fisk’s trade-in Glock 27 sub-compact .40 S&W caliber pistol as well as the three others, as having been obtained for the sole use of the City of Waco, and not for resale or transfer. One of the forms was a standard Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives Treasury Department form.
He alleges that this documented falsehood is a perpetration of a third degree felony violation of a subsection of 18 US Code regarding falsification of official government documents.
“I just happened to visit G.T. Distributors when I was in Austin last week,” he said. “I gave them copies of my documentation, just so they would know where they stand in this.”
Though Chief Johnston claimed in remarks to the union’s president that there was no truth to reports that he kicked in doors at his daughter’s apartment, the documents clearly show that he did so when he thought the young woman was inside preparing to kill herself with a razor blade.
Police reports released to the Johnstons’ daughter Taylor recount how she was found in a bathtub, cutting patterns on her naked thighs because it is easier to bear that kind of pain than it is to endure the strife of her mother’s wrath, she explained to Waco police. The officers took her to a local hospital for treatment, where she was released after evaluation of her condition.
The end result, according to Officer Steven Ashworth in a final report, is the series of serious offenses against the person and property were “exceptionally cleared.”
A description of her employment at the time of her last arrest showed she worked for Private Investigator Truman Simon, a former Lieutenant of the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office. A notation on the documents shows that her permit had lapsed at the time.
Chief Johnston later accepted a demotion from the top job at the Fire Department to that of an Assistant Chief and thereby received Civil Service protection not afforded to the “at-will” employment status of a city department head.
After 30 years on the job, 12 as Chief, Johnston sent a memo to his staff on September 16, 2015, saying that as of January 1, 2016, “Being Chief is a very time consuming job and requires a lot of energy and attention. I need God to be number one in my life, family second and job third…I am stepping back into an Assistant Chief role. I will be one of 4 Assistant Chiefs.”
The announcement came 15 days after the death of former Deputy U.S. Marshal Mike McNamara.
Mrs. Johnston endured a hot 15 minutes of fame when she found a close friend, long-time law man Mike McNamara, suffering a fatal heart attack in the parking lot of a steak house on Franklin Avenue in Waco. She called 9-1-1 operators and became rather hysterical when the woman who answered the emergency call began to ask questions. The tense moments were captured on tape.
Fisk has previously disclosed that he has much of his original documentation stored digitally, including computer files, interviews and photos, and that according to his attorney, it is his personal property, protected by attorney-client privilege since he turned it over to the lawyer.
There is much other evidence of alleged legal violations by police and firemen, he has said. He insists he does not want to place himself in a position in which he may be accused of interfering with an ongoing investigation.
Both the fire that took the lives of Ashley Dawn Rogers and her children and the internal affairs probe are said to be open cases.
When last heard from, Kevin Fisk, who just obtained a spanking new private investigator’s license from a bureau of the Department of Public Safety, was headed for KWTX Channel 10 to consult with news anchor Gordon Collier about a documentary presentation of his story by that news outlet.
Sherre Johnston (r) recently opened “Ricochet,” a boutique located in the Central Texas Marketplace, that specializes in trendy party dresses
Six Shooter Junction – Kevin Fisk’s phone rang one day, and out of the blue, an associated arson investigator with the BATFE’s arson unit asked, “Why aren’t you down here?”
Here. That would be Houston, regional headquarters for many things federal due to its central administrative status as the Southern District of the U.S. District Court for Texas.
Jose Viegra, an assisting Special Agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the man who had provided K9 accelerant detection services at the fire scene when Fisk originally eliminated the possibility that Ashley Dawn Rogers somehow caused her own death through arson and those of two of her children on February 16, 2012, was on the line.
In fact, the delay in removing their bodies from the fire scene during that part of the investigation as Fisk waited for Viegra, a certified fire investigator for ATF, touched off a lingering squabble with the charge investigator from the joint investigation run by the Waco Police Department, John Rosyzski. The detective was in a rush to remove their remains and resented Fisk’s insistence on a thorough elimination of causes for the blaze then and there, a meticulous approach to what would prove to be a tortuous and protracted, interrupted and highly contentious feud between members of the investigative bureaus of the City of Waco’s two public safety agencies, the police and fire departments.
The ATF agent quizzed Fisk at length to make certain he was aware of, but he hadn’t been permitted by his superiors to take statements from a star witness, an accused offender turned informer who could put as many as six accused offenders under indictment for offenses in connection with the alleged capital murders of Ms. Rogers’ family.
Fisk’s investigation at that point had all but totally eliminated all other possible causes for the sudden fiery explosion.
Players in multiple agencies were assured the Rogers fire at a N. 19th St. Bosqueville trailer park was a murder case in which fire was used as a weapon.
An additional 25 alleged offenders faced indictment in the Western U.S. District Courts for similar offenses centering around the brisk Central Texas trade in Waco and Temple in methamphetamines in what a combined task force labeled “Operation La Flamma Blanca” – the white flame, burning brightly from its highly explosive constituent precursor chemicals of ether, phosphorus, acetone – in deadly combination with lithium and phenyl acetic acid.
At this point, it’s well to let the Waco operative attached to the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force, Lieutenant Fred Rhea of the Office of the Inspector General of the State of Texas, take up the narrative.
In a memo to the Waco Fire Department supervisors in charge of arson investigation, Rhea reported, “As you are aware, we have been assisting Lt. Kevin Fisk of the Waco Fire Marshal’s Office with the Arson Investigation which claimed the lives of three victims.
“I can emphatically say that Kevin has, and continues to be, a credit to your department. Together we have been able to uncover all the intricate details of what we believe to be one of the most horrific crimes I have ever investigated.
“I believe that with your tacit approval, we can bring this case to a successful conclusion with indictments on as many as six individuals, if we can devote several solid weeks for to finalize our interviews, and complete our case preparation to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”
He requested permission for Fisk to accompany him to Houston to help finalize “two separate investigations, one on the federal side involving a criminal enterprise case, and on the state side, a Capital Murder case that Kevin has so diligently worked…
“I thank God that Kevin never gave up, even in the light of what other agencies determined,” Rhea declared.
In the next phrase, he named the informant who would put the six offenders on the scene in the capital murder investigation. That name has been redacted from the public record.
Lt. Rhea tagged out his memo by explaining just how the Federal Bureau of Prisons could assist with having prisoners transferred to Houston to finalize the interrogations and await indictment on cases developed by the FBI, ATF, Bureau of Prisons, and all the elements of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas/ATF Task Force, an ongoing investigation spanning the previous four years.
He emphasized that the transfers of the prisoners and of Fisk would be temporary, something that “could greatly benefit these three agencies.
Today, discredited, uncommissioned as a peace officer, his investigation in disarray and operating under the threat of what his attorneys have suggested is the very real possibility of both civil and criminal litigation for the interference with an ongoing investigation that is stymied and going nowhere, Kevin Fisk is still awaiting official word of the invitation by the federal violent crimes task force and never relayed by his superiors at the Waco Fire Department or at City Hall. Though he was carbon copied with Rhea’s insistent e-mail to his superiors, their approval somehow never arrived on Fisk’s desk.
Today, he involves himself in the meticulous details of the proper organization of a private investigations bureau operating under a permit from the Texas Department of Public Safety.
A student of the sweet science of pugilistic boxing in his earlier life, he resembles a member of the ancient Greek cult of athleticism, in whose faith and practice, the only true sin was to fail to even try to hit the mark so boldly displayed for all who would aspire to take the challenge.
A screen shot from a surveillance video camera at Twin Peaks, moments after shots rang out and people in blind panic fled for their lives
“Shared from Cisneros, Patricia – San Antonio
An inbox message…FROM A WAITRESS IN TWIN PEAKS. ON MAY 17, 2015.
“”I know you said you aren’t writing Stories anymore but I hope you will share this. I was a waitress there. The bikers are telling the truth. They saved our lives. The policemen in Waco really were pretending to be bikers. They have been trying to be setting up the bikers for months because one approached me trying to get me to help him. He was here as a biker and as a policeman that day. They scared us all to death and treated us like common criminals. I still have nightmares of the black policeman screaming at me that he was going to shoot me. I may forget what it smelled like in the freezer. I may forget watching them scream at dying men and wouldn’t let them have ambulances or doctors. I may forget that biker cop and the way he smiled at me like he was having fun. I will never forget the fear I felt that day because I felt like I was in a war and the policemen were the bad guys. If you don’t want to write any more stories it’s okay.” Shared from Cisneros, Patricia – San Antonio
The week of Monday, February 20, 2017 started with a bang.
Cisneros, Patricia, who admits that is not her real name, made a Facebook entry in a double blind cutout that led back to former national columnist Amy Irene White of “Easy Riders” fame. Nearly two years before, White had promised to go after and get the story of a waitress who endured the police assault in reaction to a shooting fracas that began over what had been represented as having been compelled from everything from a parking dispute to a turf war over who has the right to proclaim their club’s origins as “Texas” on their colors.
The young women who looked so good wearing low-cut flannel lumberjack shirts, short shorts and clunky boots worked for little more than minimum wage and hefty tips from patrons who lined the nationally franchised Twin Peaks establishment to watch sports events on big screen televisions while they enjoyed burgers and ice-cod beer.
Naturally, having lived through such a frightening event, they were horrified that someone might come after them in order to assure their silence.Though eye witnesses had asserted all along that the Waco cops who organized the alleged offenders into columns, confiscated their phones and put them on city buses to be transported to the downtown Convention Center were hostile, threatening, no one would actually go on the record with their impressions until this quote appeared, without clear attribution to other than a “waitress” who had been there when about 90 seconds of the hell of war and flying rounds broke loose and demons in possession of human souls while in the skillful application of executive force strode through the crowd assuring their charges they would shoot to kill them if they didn’t obey their commands.
All the while, those wounded with the tumbling, fragmenting, roughly quarter-inch diameter .223 rounds fired exclusively by police, lay bleeding to death until the crime scene had been secured, cleared, and order had been restored – if there ever was any to begin with at a scene in which bikers opposing one other over their club affiliations, either the red and gold worn by the Bandidos and their supporters, or black an gold, the color of the Cossacks who refused to cooperate with the Bandidos and the Confederation of Clubs and Independents, had clearly stepped into eternity in an L-shaped ambush that both panicked and rendered helpless the fiercely opposed groups.
Within hours, the item had been shared to other Facebook time lines hundreds of times and its number of persons reached had climbed well above 10,000. By Wednesday evening at 10 p.m. news time, the quote was well above the 48,000 mark – a clear indication that people nationwide, throughout the central Texas I-35 corridor from Laredo to Minneapolis and points east and west, from sea to shining sea, were hungry for information, no matter how sensational or vague.
This set Dallas attorney F. Clinton Broden, whose law firm represents in cooperation with a Hempstead partnership those who wear the black and gold, to inquire of the alternative news media just who Cisneros, Patricia is, and how he could get in touch with her to take her statement for the record. The abogado had reached out across the lines, from Big D to the Alamo City, headquarters of the international biker club, Los Bandidos.
Broden made his inquiry casually, asking journalists had favored with court documents, statements and invitations to news conferences and crucial court appearances to relay his message.
Cisneros, Patricia’s friends responded that if she could and would put he and his colleagues in contact with the anonymous waitress, she would reply through Amy Irene White in a double cutout when she knew she could not be double crossed, her life placed in danger.
The uneasy community of Texan motorcycle enthusiasts settled down to wait under the conditions imposed by high dollar bonds for the alleged offenders and the gag orders for attorneys and law men imposed by a ruling by 54th Criminal District Judge Matt Johnson early in the summer of 2015, the fabled “gag order” that covered only the case of Matthew Allen Clendennen, a member of the Cossacks support club, the Scimitars, who operates a commercial lawn and grounds care service for area corporations.
It was a vague and ill-defined milestone, one without clear focus, but it was the first public acknowledgement by a person not directly involved with the so-called “melee” rumored for many months on social media that cops disguised as bikers had fanned out through the crowds during the weeks preceding Sunday, May 17, 2015, antagonizing and threatening the patrons of Twin Peaks, especially those wearing patches of the Confederation of Clubs and Independents whose ranks include members of the Bandidos and their support clubs, and on the day of the massacre, turning their coats and appearing as police officers who wielded AR-15 assault rifles with deadly menace while their uniformed colleagues threatened in loud tones that they would not hesitate to kill any and all who opposed them in any way.
One had to ask, quietly, of one self, “What, exactly, would be on a waitress’ phone, or any woman’s, a casual eye witness to what happened, either employed at the restaurant, or waiting for a political meeting of the Confederation of Clubs and Independents?”
These are mature women, both ingenues prima gravitas, grandmothers and matrons alike, mothers of families, grandmothers of young families of young men and women. What would they have on their phones?
Pictures. Pictures of kids, friends, parties, good times, bikes, text messages, phone numbers, news items, subscriptions to features and software, games…all the impedimenta of McLuhan’s global electronic village, the last neighborhood in the world as we know it, shrunken, made small by NASA, jets, satellites, and global information wars waged by anonymous hackers of governments, guerillas, and the political process.
That’s what. As such, it was only part of a process of desensitization, in which privacy or even common decency under attack from hostile forces of law and order, aggression by warring factions of private citizens who had formed alliances based on creeds, codes and other arcana of the darkness on the edge of town so well described by “Boss” Springsteen – the politics of a world rushing headlong into a “runaway American dream” turned nightmare.
Six Shooter Junction – Defendants in the Twin Peaks cases have signaled a clear-cut strategy to bankrupt McLennan County – the silent threat that they might bring their violent conflict into the corridors and courtrooms of the antiquated Victorian-era courthouse.
All of the 155 indicted defendants are accused of the identical offense of “engaging in organized criminal behavior” in the commission of capital murder, and/or aggravated assault through the use of whips, chains, firearms, brass knuckles, knives, and other weapons.
Waco Police and Department of Public Safety officers, on the other hand, have been absolved of any criminal charges by Grand Jury action to decline to return any true bill of indictment against them for firing AR-15 assault rifles into the middle of the fighting crowd.
McLennan County Judge Scott Felton labeled “unsustainable” the projected costs of ramped-up security needs by providing overtime pay for deputies who need to work two jobs in order to make ends meet.
Chief Deputy David Kilcrease called the tune, saying the need for beefed up Twin Peaks trial security precludes the less costly practice of awarding compensatory time off. The trials are scheduled to begin in April, almost two years after the May 17, 2015 massacre that erupted as a Confederation of Clubs and Independents meeting was beginning on the patio of the trendy beer joint and sports bar – its purpose, to discuss and update the status of proposed legislation in the Legislature regarding motorcycle safety funds gleaned from registration fees and constitutional handgun carry laws.
During that long interlude, not one defendant has offered to accept a plea bargain, relieving the State of its strict burden of proof in a costly trial by jury.
A daily news article quoted Kilcrease, saying, “We’re going to have, not just two competing motorcycle groups who both have violent tendencies, but they’ve also got a lot of affiliated groups. There’s a huge number of people who may or may not be prone to violence or acting out in a way that’s inappropriate.”
Ain’t that the truth. You might have a security guy from the Constable’s office, take a little old fat man’s pen out of the basket there, and act like he’s going to stab the old boy in the eye, then get loud and stupid and say it’s the little old man’s fault. Stuff like that. Need a lot of overtime to front that out.
The two competing motorcycle groups are clearly bent on a strategy that will show the officials their error – that they can’t afford all this here. They need to drop a lot of foolish charges and go head on with the ones they can prove. These folks refuse to cop a plea.
A POLICE OFFICER CAUGHT ON CCTV FIRES FROM PATIO OF DON CARLOS CANTINA NEXT DOOR TO TWIN PEAKS DURING ‘MELEE’
Dalllas attorneys F. Clinton Broden and Don Tittle have announced that since the two-year filing deadline for civil rights actions stemming from arrests made at Twin Peaks on May 17, 2015 expires on that date in May, they would like to speak with people who face charges in what they describe as illegal, unconstitutional cases of unreasonable search and seizure, among other violations of constitutional law.
We of The Legendary elected to ask them specific questions about such cases, to let them explain to We The People the significance of the constitutional law that underpins the quality of life in a free country. Simply because we don’t really believe we have a total or complete grasp of such a weighty subject, we have sought wise counsel.
Don Tittle is a successful federal litigator of civil rights cases who has made many police departments and public officials pay for ignoring the rights of their consituents. Together, they have graciously agreed to volunteer their time to answer these questions so that We The People will be able to form an intelligent opinion on the issues and base any resulting decisions on reliable information.
Amendment IV to the Constitution of the United States of America
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
1. Why is Amendment IV to the Constitution so important – the basic underpinning – in the litigation of a 42 United States Code § 1983 Civil Rights case complaint for persons arrested at Twin Peaks on May 17, 2015?
2. Does their arrest represent a “seizure” in the eye of the law?
3. So the fact that Detective Chavez did not “particularize” the reasons for probable cause to exist that the defendants did then and there engage in organized criminal activity in a conspiracy with others attending a political meeting of the Confederation of Clubs and Independents is significant because an affidavit presented to a magistrate is to be particular enough to describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized?
4. District Attorney Abel Reyna testified on cross examination from the witness stand in a hearing of your motion to disqualify he and his staff from this prosecution that he had cautioned Detective Manuel Chavez, his codefendant in other civil rights suits stemming from the Twin Peaks arrests, that he must satisfy himself that his probable cause affidavits of warrantless arrests, each of them identical, were valid, that he could with confidence sign off on their allegations of complaint. When Detective Chavez was recalled to the witness stand, he plainly stated he had not spoken with Reyna at any time that day. How is this significant as to the litigation of Twin Peaks civil rights lawsuits? Clearly, Reyna lied. What role was he playing when he cooked all this up?
5. So, would it be fair to say that the basic complaint in this body of litigation is centered on the conditions precedent that existed when Chavez presented the charging instruments to Justice of the Peace “Pete” Peterson?
6. Had he been of a mind to, could Judge Peterson have rejected the charges out of hand due to this alleged defect, as described in previously filed § 1983 complaints about the arrests at Twin Peaks on May 17, 2015?
7. How does the occasion itself, the meeting of the COC & I, relate to the basic civil rights as guaranteed by the Constitution? Which Amendment in the Bill of Rights is paramount, and why?
8. The controversial practice of civil asset forfeiture is drawing a lot of scrutiny in this term of the Legislature from members who are disquietened by alleged abuses by law enforcement officers who are not bound by any requirement to first obtain a conviction, or even to file any charges in order to seize money and property from alleged offenders. In the case of the civil asset forfeiture of one of your clients’ motorcycle, you were able to have his property restored. For future reference, could you describe to folks just how such a thing can be done by a competent attorney, and what is involved?
9. If there is linkage between the Twin Peaks assault on civil liberties and the U.S. Army’s Special Operations Command’s previously announced JADE HELM 15, would you consider it similar to pacification programs the Army has run in foreign lands under the aegis of the CIA, operations such as the Phoenix Program in Vietnam and similar in other conflicts known as undeclared wars? After all, the operation was particularized to the American Southwest, its acronym an abbreviation for Joint Assistant Defense Executive Homeland Elimination Local Militants 2015.
10. If so, would that indicate that the American military is levying war on its own activist citizens in the absence of constitutional authority or congressional approval?
11. Why do you, as a seasoned litigator, think that the U.S. Constitution’s Preamble begins with the words, “We The People…”?
12. As the only woman in detention in the big back parking lot of Twin Peaks, I was forced to squat in order to urinate in full view of television cameras and spectators when police refused to walk me to a restroom. Can I be compensated for that humiliation?
13. A biker who requested anonymity asked these questions: After talking to ‘Mama,’ just the normal ones, I’m sure: How long can we expect the case to take? How much money do you think we’re looking at? Do we have to pay money up front for this, or do you take this on a contingency basis? If a contengency basis, what percentage? Who do we sue? Individuals, or the entire state and county government? What proof is required?
F. Clinton Broden will blast DA Abel Reyna’s motives in appeals court
Waco – DA Abel Reyna is forging ahead with malicious prosecution of 155 indictments of alleged Twin Peaks offenders for engaging in organized criminal activity because he has a financial interest, according to a brief to be argued in appeals court on Wednesday.
The resulting mano a mano will take place in the ornate fourth floor courtroom of the 10th District Court of Appeals at the McLennan County Courthouse on Wednesday, March 1, at 11 am.
There are serious issues on the table.
F. Clinton Broden, the Dallas attorney representing Matthew Clendennen in the 54th Criminal District Court will get 20 minutes to tick off the reasons that Reyna’s professional and political future is wrapped up in a faulty decision to take over the Waco police investigation of a ultra-violent gunfight between bikers that prompted the intervention of cops with assault rifles. It resulted in 90 seconds of hell that left 9 dead, 20 wounded, and 177 charged with the identical offense on non-specific and completely unparticularized affidavits of probable cause sworn en masse before Justice of the Peace Pete Peterson – a complete abrogation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
And then the former Highway Patrol supervisor set each defendant’s bond at $1 million in order to “send a message,” an alleged violation of the Code of Criminal Procedure’s proscription against bail set so ridiculously high as to be punitive in its nature.
Broden succeeded in forcing Peterson’s recusal to hear examining trials of those so charged prior to their indictments.
In a hearing in an August hearing in support of a motion to disqualify Reyna and his staff from prosecution of the cases, Broden caught Reyna in a bald-faced lie regarding those charging instruments when he testified from the witness stand that he had instructed Waco Police Detective Manuel Chavez not to allege anything about the cases unless he could with good faith assert his personal knowledge of what happened, therein described.
While Reyna was excluded from the courtroom as a witness, Chavez had previously testified out of the presence of Reyna that he was not on the scene at the time of the eruption of vioence, that he was across town working on another case.
Following Reyna’s testimony, Broden recalled Chavez to the witness stand – where he answered the question of whether Reyna had so instructed him by saying he had not spoken to Reyna at any time that day, Sunday, May 17, 2015.
You could have heard a pin drop.
It is Broden’s allegation that not only did Reyna propagate a falsehood before the open Court, he at the time of the investigation on the fateful day of the gunfight at Twin Peaks became a “necessary witness,” as did his staff, by taking on the role of police officers directing an investigation, and not prosecutors observing and nominally advising the police as to the legal matters involved.
The central issue: “Whether Mr. Clendennen is denied due process by allowing the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office to prosecute him in this case given the fact that the elected District Attorney as well as some of his assistants will be necessary witnesses at trial and given that the elected District Attorney has a huge financial interest in the outcome of these prosecutions.”
Broden added, “…Respondent (District Judge Matt Johnson) abused his discretion in denying Mr. Clendennen’s Motion to Disqualify McLennan County District Attorney’s Office and Appoint an Attorney Pro Tem.”
The allegation of jurisdiction is expressed this way. “The Court has jurisdiction of this Petition pursuant to Tex. Gov’t Code § 22.221.
“The Petitiion is also bought under the due course of law clause contained in Article 1, Section 19 of the Texas Constitution and the due process clauses contained in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.”
It is a fact that Chief Brent Stroman, Assistant Chief Robert Lanning, Detective V.R. Price, Jr., Detective Manuel Chavez and Detective Michael Alston were consistent in their recollection that Lanning and Price and other Assistant Police Chief did not believe all the Bandidos, Cossacks and their support club members should be arrested.
Despite their plan to transport the people who were present at the gunfight to various local police stations to be released, “McLennan County District Attorney Abelino Reyna did not like this plan and did not like the decision that Lanning was making not to arrest all of the Bandidos, Cossacks and their support club membrers. Indeed, Mr. Reyna wanted all motorcyclists wearing ‘colors’ and present at Twin Peaks arrested regardless of club membership.”
Reyna also later told Chief Stroman by long distance phone that he wanted everybody arrested, “despite the opinion of each and every assistant police chief on the scene…”
Stroman testified that he knew of no plan to arrest everyone until he got back in town on Monday. The reason? That’s what Reyna wanted.
Reyna’s staff “set the criteria” by which Chavez’ arrest affidavit would be written and signed by the officer.
“Although Chavez would not normally sign an affidavit alleging facts as if they were in his personal knowledge when they were not, he agreed to do so on this occasion because, during the process, “the District Attorney’s office provided the police ‘false information.’”
Reyna testified that he gave very specific instructions to Detective Chavez to assure himself that he was to “read every single line and word in this affidavit…”
“Nevertheless, Detective Chavez testified that he never even spoke to Mr. Reyna that night!”
As a result of all these circumstances, Reyna and his staff members became “necessary witnesses” to the complaint, acting as law enforcement officers who would be able to offer direct testimony as to the facts of the offenses alleged in indictments.
The Texas Rules of Criminal Evidence preclude prosecution by such persons, as well as the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.
“Moreover, Reyna has a huge financial interest in the outcome of the prosecutions,” wrote Broden in his brief.
Because he advocated for the arrest of Clendennen and a total of 177 alleged offenders without telling Chief Stroman of the exact charge, he and police officials, the Commissioners’ Court, and the Magistrate, Justice of the Peace Pete Peterson, are being sued in U.S. District Court for denial of a number of the defendants’ civil rights under the authority of 42 U.S. Code § 1983.
The number is not yet fixed because prospective litigants have until May 17, 2017 before the statute of limitations tolls and it will be too late to file suit.
By advocating for their arrests and the fact that he “also involved himself in the investigative phase of the cause prior to a determination of probable cause…Reyna could be personally liable for damages arising out of the false arrests of the mortorcyclists and consequently, his career and financial well-being are in jeopardy.”
Should Reyna be able to obtain a conviction in the case, “he reduces his personal financial exposure for the false arrests for which he advocated.”
Stroman will be allowed 20 minutes to make his argument, and following the answer of the Respondent, Judge Johnson, and the Real Party In Interest, the State of Texas, time to rebut the arguments.
Waco – William English said it best. A Marine veteran of combat in Iraq, at some point he told a person in authority, made a statement in the form of a question by asking:
“Do you think I’d take my WIFE to a gunfight?”
Police arrested the couple just moments after they arrived at the bloody scene of a 90-second firefight in the parking lot of Twin Peaks Restaurant on May 17, 2015. Like all the 177 arrested that day, they faced a charge identical to all the others, of engaging in organized criminal activity, their bond set at $1 million in order to “send a message,” though the state law says it’s illegal to set bail so high that it is a punitive measure, designed to deny folks their freedom while a criminal charge is pending.
English won their freedom when he and his wife faced an examining trial before a visiting judge, James Morgan, formerly of the 220th Judicial District at Comanche. Though Judge Morgan told their attorney, Paul Looney of Hempstead, “You make a good argument, Mr. Looney, but I think it’s one for a jury,” it’s not over until it’s over.
Later, authorities dropped the charges against the couple after the Marine who made it home to Brenham alive asked his incisive question about where his interlocutor thought he would take the War Department.
It was a question dripping with the sarcasm of the veteran practitioner of organized violence, the kind of man who’s been to hell and back and can recognize an L-shaped ambush when he’s walked into one expecting a civic functio – and made it out alive, only to face serious charges leveled by the inscrutable forces of law and order – for his own protection.
He is not alone. He is a family man, has brothers around, walking free, behind bars, and in the graveyard. Some are grandfathers, others uncles, cousins, but every one of them is a brother.
Their numbers grew when they got home from World War II and collected $50 unemployment compensation for 52 weeks – “the fifty-two fifty club” – as veterans who returned from overseas, waiting for the wartime economy to re-tool and gear up for the prosperity of the Pax Americana to come.
Getting around was a hassle. There weren’t any cars.
What cars available were old, worn out; there weren’t any pieces for them. America was plumb fresh out of bearings, pistons, spark plugs, distributor wires, fan belts, tires, batteries, and everything else it takes to make the flivver locomote down the boulevard.
The gearheads amongst the soldiers and sailors, Marines and Airmen found the motorcycles, first thing. They spent their back pay on anything they could get, and little shops sprung up all over stateside, presided over by the kind of dudes who are sharp enough to cannibalize, improvise and pluck the doo-dads necessary to make them run, screw them on, and tune them up.
In their mad, heart attack dash to run the roads and drink the brew, get back to the business of being young men, they behaved tribally, picking their leaders by the usual way that sort of thing is done.
They exercised the territorial imperative in its most primitive form, hardened by war, tempered by the discipline of organized combat, forged in a free country, riding for the glory, their collective honor on parade.
Like any tribe, they developed the coloration that would distinguish them from any enemies who might cross their paths, their “colors,” and an entire culture was off to the races.
The tides have turned.
There is a movement afoot worldwide that dictates the notion that people like the fifty-two, fifty club ought to be protected from themselves, their judgment not quite as sharp as that of THE MAN, the prehensile fingers and toes of the POLICE STATE reaching out for that fabled brass ring, looking to carve out a new niche to sit upon – up there on the devil shelf in some little chapel of idolatry and arcane worship of the authoritarian, anal retentive mind.
The peacocks will not strut in their self-chosen “colors.” That’s a clear cut indication of membership in an organized crime street gang, an outlaw motorcycle gang, it says here – right here – in the manual. And then, there’s the goofy-looking paint jobs on the cars they drive.
People like Bill English got jerked up, their bodies, phones, motorcycles, cash, ID and clothes seized and searched on statements of probable cause with no particular complaint mentioned. They were held incommunicado in a privately operated jail – a dungeon deemed unfit by the federal government to detain persons in this nation without legal authority.
When it came time to hear a motion to disqualify the person who made this decision, the District Attorney, who by making that decision crossed the line from being a prosecutor to taking up the cudgel of the policeman, they learned that he had lied to the Court in direct testimony from the witness stand, his rightful place in any court action to come, as the necessary witness testifying in support of the allegation of complaint made by he, Reyna, the prosecutor, acting as a cop.
His major decision, the one upon which all the others were seemingly predicated: Arrest everyone wearing “colors.”
And so, under certain circumstances, for our own protection, we may not wear items of personal adornment of our own choosing, pending a decision by the prosecutor, who may be acting independently of the U.S. and Texas Constitutions, the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Code of Hammurabi, The Talmud, the Torah, The Ten Commandments, the Quran, and both ecclesiastic and Masonic jurisprudence in making a POLICE decision.
The cops all testified that what they had in mind was more along the lines of capital murder, attempted capital murder, aggravated assault, disorderly conduct, assault with a motor vehicle – those kind of non-conspiratorial, more direct crimes against persons, and not the amorphous and tinfoil-hatted selection of ENGAGING IN ORGANIZED CRIMINAL ACTIVITY.
Gimme a break, over here.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Abelino Reyna, District Attorney. May we succeed in making him famous throughout our state, the nation, and hopefully, the world. He deserves Legendary status. Believe it.
Today, the Chief and Associate Justices of the three-judge panel of the Tenth District Court of Appeals sitting at Waco must decide if Abel Reyna and his staff should be replaced by a Special Prosecutor Pro Tempore.
Aside from those who did actually assault others with fists, revolvers and pistols, whips, chains, brass knuckles and what have you, most “offenders” merely ran for cover and lay on the floor or the pavement while they waited for the police to clear the crime scene.
There is abundant video evidence of who did what.
It’s almost like a Hollywood movie, since the cops and state troopers set up cameras to catch the full details of the ambush they laid, and Reyna and the defense attorneys subpoenaed closed circuit television footage from the Twin Peaks Restaurant, the neighboring cantina, Don Carlo’s, and surrounding businesses.
But that’s not the end of it.
Police stopped motorcyclists and detained them, prevented them from traveling into Waco; they have retained the phones confiscated nearly two years ago, gleaning the pictures, phone numbers, text messages and every bit of the information to be found on them. In short, the cops are steadily carrying out the agenda of a New World Order that would deny Americans the freedoms afforded by their Constitution.
Why were the Twin Peaks 177 there?
They were there to hear a report from members of the U.S. Defenders Legislative Strike Force on the status of a set of proposed bills addressing the notion of Constitutional Open Carry of handguns, an $18 million “motorcycle safety fund” gleaned from registration fees and unspent by a Governor and Legislature hell bent to balance its budget, and other safety and traffic considerations under scrutiny by state Legislators as they affect motorcyclists.
This was arranged by the Confederation of Clubs and Independents, an organization dedicated to coordinating the efforts of a crowd of people dedicated to freedom.
What happened represents a full frontal assault on the principles of the Republic, as described by B. Franklin, Printer, of Philadelphia, a member of the Constitutional Convention presided over by another hardened war veteran, General George Washington.
He was instrumental in the insertion of the precise language in that instrument, that Americans would enjoy a “republican” form of tripartite, federalized leadership limited to only certain powers, the rest reserved for the states.
Part of that limitation of powers is that the federal government, so actively pursing a RICO prosecution against leadership elements of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club, is not to interfere with the free association of people who wish to meet together to discuss freely what they may choose, be it religion, politics, sports, weather or anything else one ought not mention in a Texas beer joint where the folks are either in a belligerent mood, the Legislature is in session, or both.
If I can clear the departures gate at the door of the McLennan County Courthouse, pass the security inspection with my pen, my notebook, and my pocket change and ID, I will be there to hear the arguments in support or rebuttal of the motion to replace Abel Reyna as the prosecutor over the Twin Peaks cases.
The ornate double-dome stained glass ceiling of five-pointed stars
Waco- In remarks before the appeals court today, the attorney representing Matthew Clendennen vowed that he would call District Attorney Abel Reyna to the witness stand to testify about his decision to have police arrest everyone at the bloody scene of a gunfight between bikers that resulted in 9 deaths and 20 wounded by gunshots fired not only by bikers but by police, while 177 faced identical charges on May 17, 2015.
Said F. Clinton Broden, when questioned by the Court, that he would call Reyna as a witness because “Due process says my client has a right to.”
At one point, Chief Justice Tom Gray hinted that evidence could be suppressed and the case dismissed.
As courtrooms go, the 10th District Court of Appeals is gaudier than most with its 14 veined marble Corinthian columns, guilded cornices and individual padded leather chairs arranged in a semicircle before the three-judge panel.
If looks alone count, one knows that this is an expensive place to air one’s grievances against the state.
The questioning led by Chief Justice Tom Gray into the matter of whether Matthew Clendennen, a member of the Scimitars Motorcycle Club on May 17, 2015, who sat down at a patio table, ordered a hamburger, and immediately took a position on the floor when shooting broke out was denied his right to due process of law became incisive and at one point testy.
F. Clinton Broden of Dallas, who has practiced criminal law now for 30 years, refused to be swayed from his central point, that District Attorney Abel Reyna lied from the witness stand when he said that he admonished Detective Manuel Chavez to make dead sure he could testify to every part of the allegations of complaint in an identical affidavit of arrest he had drafted by an assistant prosecutor for Chavez to sign.
When recalled to the witness stand, Chavez said he had not talked to Reyna at any point during the day of May 15.
Broken said, “There is some reason why Abel Reyna is lying about these proceedings.”
Justice Gray then said, “I don’t approve of the characterization of Abel Reyna’s testimony as lying.”
Visibly shocked, Broden replied, I’ve never in 30 years had occasion to do so…” He added that when he quizzed Reyna on the witness stand about his exposure to liability for that very complaint when he took over a police investigation and persuaded Waco’s top cop to let him charge everyone with the same offense, Reyna lied when he said his employer’s insurance coverage would indemnify him for any error or omission at law.
But his insurance attorney, pointed out Broden held otherwise. There are 15 federal denial of civil rights cases pending in U.S. District Court at Austin. According to legal representatives of the insurance carrier, only a small part of the potential exposure for damages is indemnified by the McLennan County insurance policy.
Therefore, he has a huge financial interest in obtaining convictions in the cases as charged for identical offenses of engaging in organized criminal activity.
None of the Chief Justice’s questions could shake Broden up. He steadfastly answered all challenges as voiced by Sterling Harmon of the District Attorney’s staff with the rejoinder, “We still have Reyna being the only one to explain why Clendennen went from being a witness to being a defendant.”
By logical extension, the same is true of most of the 177 persons so arrested and charged on that date, their bail set a $1 million to “send a message.”
Mr. Harmon said, “There has been a misconception as to what a District Attorney’s job is…” According to him, the DA has broad and sweeping powers to determine the proper charge and set plea bargains. He gave a long list of such tasks as defined by a recent court decision involving a legal case on point with the question involving the Twin Peaks cases.
Said Gray, “The one that doesn’t seem to be in that laundry list is arrest.”
Harmon replied, “I can assure you the DA of McLennan County did not arrest anybody.”
But Broden countered that argument when he got a chance to rebut Harmon’s statement to the Court.
He said that Reyna never told the Chief of Police Brent Stroman, who was vacationing with family in Baltimore, what charge he intended to file. In an earlier hearing, Stroman testified, “I never knew.”
Harmon had argued that “materiality” would pull the iron of the fire on that pesky problem because, “As long as you’re within the four corners of that arrest affidavit…”
Asked the Judge, “How do you get past the fact that the testimony asserted there was a conversation, and the Detective said there was not?”
Associate Justice Rex Davis asked, “If Reyna has to testify, should he be disqualified?”
In a word, Harmon replied, “No.”
He said there is a “plethora” of other witnesses who could testify.
Broden countered by pointing out transcripts from the unsuccessful August hearing before Judge Matt Johnson of 54 Criminal District Court showed that none of the detectives had knowledge of Reyna’s intentions until they became accomplished by the draft of an affidavit of warrantless arrest prepared by Assistant Prosecutor Mark Parker.
In concluding the hearing, Justice Gray said “This case has been submitted for our decision.”
OYEZ! OYEZ! OYEZ! THE 10TH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS IS NOW IN SESSION. GOD SAVE THE CONSTITUTION AND THE STATE OF TEXAS
Six Shooter Junction – Quite simply, reducing each element of the thing to its simplest proportions, the message laid down by the lawyer and his client is clear.
They care not how it makes anyone look – in court or in the place where the streets have no name and the nightmare is endless, even in the light of day.
Unless they are able to get assurance they will face a prosecutor and staff with a semblance of constitutional principle, they care not how it makes anyone look when they place the elected Criminal District Attorney of McLennan County on the witness stand and expose the fact to a jury of the accused offender’s peers that he lied to the Court and to his constituents when he minimized his role in a decision to charge everyone wearing club colors after a riot involving shooting by cops and bikers on May 17, 2015 with the first degree felony crime of conspiracy to engage in organized criminal activity.
When that event occurs, and it will as sure as God made little green apples, the world will perceive what happened – in stereo and blood-tinged Technicolor – that something akin to a Phoenix Program “pacification” exercise took place at high noon on a Sunday.
I just want to say, as they say in Chicago, that it will be a performance probably repeated in every case brought to jury trial, as they all will be, all 155 of them, because the men and women wearing those colors are resolved to not remove the burden of proof from the State of Texas and admit they did something not only they did not do, but no one did – because it never in fact happened.
Someone murdered – yes; someone shot guns – yes; someone assaulted with a deadly weapon – yes! That much is true, but not everyone present is culpable by reason of a conspiracy to engage in organized criminal activity. They were there to associate with others of their own choosing. That is not illegal. They were wearing clothing of a certain color. Yes. That is equally beyond the scope of the law.
Troops provoked a fight between rival factions, faded away and when those men began to fight with guns and other weapons, troops opened up from an L-shaped ambush to suppress the fighting.
At that point, everyone was taken to a Regional Interrogation Center, as William Colby of the CIA dubbed the dungeons of Vietnam, where they were jailed on an impossibly high bail, and made desperate to pay huge fees to be released, fees they will never regain, no matter what the Constitution says about such a practice of tyranny.
It matters not if they had any part in the violence. Ordering a hamburger or getting off your hawg was enough to turn you into an accused felon with the stroke of a pen signing a stack of identical, non-particular affidavits of probable cause, and the show was on.
Unless the State of Texas moves as requested by a petition of mandamus to remove Reyna and his staff and replace them with pro tempore staff appointed to do the job, a jury of 12 people will hear all about it and they will be charged by the Judge to consider all that in their deliberations – on television, where the whole world is watching.
Hark, hark, hark. The Court of Appeals is now in session and whole world is watching to see if the men who sit on its ornate and hallowed bench will stiffen their spines and strike a blow against tyranny!
And it’s the kind of tyranny that will keep a man or a woman under a huge bond with the threat that on the whim of a suretor underwriting the notion that an accused offender will return to face the Court may possibly choose to go “off bond” and have that person placed back in the dungeon. Therefore, it’s vital that the accused not speak of the matter, engage in any commerce with others so accused, check in with the court coordinator, follow a thousand other pettifogging rules to remind him that he is in no way a free man, but a man living under the conditions of bondage.
It is slavery and it is practiced every day in the halls of American justice. That’s why they call them “bondsmen,” for they engage in bondage.
GOD SAVE THE CONSTITUTION! MAY IT ARISE FROM ITS OWN ASHES IN A RING OF FIRE AND TAKE WINGS TO KILL SNAKES!
TWIN PEAKS PART OF INTERSTATE BIKER WAR FEDS ARE FIGHTING
Six Shooter Junction – Federal agents scoured the streets and netted a national officer of the Bandidos wanted for murder.
When they came for “Downtown Johnny,” he was holed up in Six Shooter, doing his thing as a National Sgt. At Arms for the Bandidos.
Johnny Romo, his brother Robert, Jesse James Benavidez, and Norbert Serna, Jr.,alleged corrected Anthony Benesh outside an Austin restaurant on March 18, 2006, according to an indictment unsealed on Wednesday, March 2, by firing a bullet and murdering him. They busted Romo’s brother and the other two guys in San Antonio.
Why?
They tried to warn Benesh, but he paid no attention when they told him that his attempt to organize a chapter of Hells Angels M/C in Ostentatious, the town Texas has proclaimed terminally weird, would only result in their severe disapproval – the termination of young life, with extreme prejudice. Texas is for Bandidos – bike, cuts, rockers and all.
At least, that’s what the U.S. Attorney’s Office says it’s prepared to prove.
According to a Federal Grand Jury, the Bandidos acted “to protect the power, reputation, and territory of the Bandidos enterprise.”
So the notion long hallowed by legend and rumor – that federal authorities including the U.S. military are acting to quell what they see as an ongoing civil war between two factions of alleged racketeers, that of two private armies vying for disputed territory in Texas – is as true as can be and right as rain.
The so-called cases filed in State District Courts for an alleged event that occurred at Twin Peaks Restaurant in Waco on May 17, 2015 for engaging in organized criminal activity may be seen as nothing more than holding actions put in place to demand the silence and cooperation of 155 persons who have been released on bond – pending a federal Racketeer Influence Corrupt Organization (RICO) criminal conspiracy case indicted against someone else else entirely in San Antonio by the U.S. Attorney.
Hot, ain’t it?
Works real good as look-see pidgin, if you take my meaning. After all, would you want to be in any of those peoples’ shoes, especially the ones who did nothing more than run away and take cover from whizzing bullets because they knew they would at the least be held accountable as witnesses to something they didn’t really see?
The earliest trial dates obtained in the Twin Peaks cases were for April 17, against three members of the Bandidos, but those cases have been indefinitely delayed because the District Attorney, Abel Reyna, has released an additional terrabyte of discovery information to defense attorneys.
The nature of the information is unspecified. It may be further inculpatory, or it may be exculpatory. But a terrabyte of information is a huge amount of information, something it will take paralegals months to digest and catalog.
In another case, that of a Cossack M/C member, the Judge recently declared a trial date in December. That defendant will declare he is ready for trial, needs no further time to prepare.
That’s a long time from now.
This is the way of federal authorities in dealing with warring factions inside the borders of any republic in which military action is afoot, be it Vietnam, Colombia, Panama, Bosnia-Herzegovina, or Lebanon.
You raid the parties, take them to a regional interrogation or relocation center, glean all the information available from them, then release them for beaucoup piaster, francs, pounds sterling, pesos, escudos or whatever – and if they can’t keep their mouths shut, back they go inside – all day and all night – until you get around to their next court appearance, and so forth.
It was the announced purpose of the Special Operations Command of the U.S. Army in early 2015 that beginning in June, their troops would be in the southern tier of the United States, from Florida to California, for the purpose of giving their operators real time experience in dealing with insurgency as a training mission for future rapid deployment in foreign countries.
As it turns out, Texas had just such a case available, ready made and chili pepper hot.
The Hells Angels had been busy trying to organize a movement that could easily patch over to red and white any time they got ready, no matter what the Fat Mexican thinks about it.
Hence, the Green Berets’ attention to detail and their help in coordinating the Violent Crimes Task Force, Fugitive Warrants Task Force, FBI, DEA, Texas DPS, County Sheriff’s Office and local police departments with ongoing cases of violence perpetrated between elements of the red and gold and black gold outlaw motorcycle enthusiasts’ clubs in the Central Texas – I-35 corridor.
‘Fat Mexican’ logo is a registered trademark copyrighted by Bandidos
Jasper, TX – The President of Bandidos Motorcycle Club, U.S.A. directed an attorney from this East Texas city to demand a correction to a RadioLegendary story printed on March 4.
Bill Sartelle requested an immediate correction of certain facts he has deemed false in our coverage of the arrest of a man represented by the government to have been a national sergeant at arms of the national motorcycle club. “Downtown Johnny” Romo was arrested in Waco, along with his brother and two others in connection with a federal murder indictment stemming from a 2006 killing by gunshot of a man at Austin, Texas, who was allegedly trying to form a chapter of Hells Angels M/C.
Mr. Sartelle stated that none of the men mentioned have been associated with the Bandidos for the past two and one-half years.
In a press release forwarded by Wm. S. Morian, Jr., an attorney in this city, Sartelle stated:
The following people Johnny Romo “Downtown Johnny,” Robert Romo, and Norberto Serna Jr “Hammer” have been out of our club for 2 ½ years. Jesse James Benavidez “Kronic”is on non-association from the BMC for the same period of time. None of these arrests involved Bandidos Motorcycle Club members.
Morian invited any inquiries by telephone, but at the time of this dispatch, which is immediate, he had not returned a phone call seeking an answer to the question. Was Downtown Johnny a member of Bandidos in March, 2006, when the government alleges he and his companions gunned down Anthony Benesh outside an Austin restaurant?
We have as yet received no answer.
Sartelle added these sentiments, that Bandidos are war veterans, hard working men of blue collar trades and white collar occupations, and your friends and neighbors. They are not a gang.
We of The Legendary never alleged any other thing. We here reported that the Government is on public record as saying they can prove all these things in U.S. District Court, as part of a case of criminal conspiracy involving an ongoing criminal enterprise, under the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) statute.
We of The Legendary News Service, an affiliate of the Texas Long-Haired Rifle Association, have nothing whatsoever to prove about the Bandidos, Angels, Cossacks, Santa Claus, Jesus, Buddha, or Confucius.
We gon’ keep on chooglin’ and hope this here will do the trick.
We reproduce Sartelle’s e-mail here:
Recent events and media reports have made it necessary for me to address certain issues for the Bandidos Motorcycle Club, United States.
The Bandidos Motorcycle Club, United States is an organization rich in history and tradition. We are a Brotherhood of bikers, not a “gang” or criminal organization of any kind. We are hard-working American men who are married, have children, who pay taxes, and who support their families and communities. We are your neighbors, business associates, patriots, Veterans of War, blue collar and white collar workers.
In recent years, we have made a concerted effort to improve our biker image. Our ties with European and Australian Chapters were severed by us because of their behavior. Similarly, we do not associate with other motorcycle clubs that we know are engaged in illegal activities.
Regarding to the recent indictment referenced above, you state that the following men are members of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club. This is a FALSE statement; these men are not members of the Bandidos Motorcycle club and we request a correction to your story immediately. The following people Johnny Romo “Downtown Johnny”, Robert Romo and Norberto Serna Jr “Hammer” have been out of our club for 2 ½ years. Jesse James Benavidez “Kronic”is on non-association from the BMC for the same period of time. None of these arrests involved Bandidos Motorcycle Club members.
The Bandidos are no more a “gang” than various law enforcement motorcycle clubs or professional athletic teams that have players that get into trouble on occasion.
As President of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club, United States, it is my desire to clear the air on these matters and demand that references to our club be based on facts, not rumor, speculation or innuendo. We are a brotherhood, we are the Bandidos Motorcycle Club, United States.
