DON CARLOS MEXICAN RESTAURANT, NEXT DOOR TO TWIN PEAKS
BE IT REMEMBERED: BEFORE THE PROSECUTION TEAM SIDETRACKED THE WACO POLICE INVESTIGATION, IT BEGAN AS A CAPITAL MURDER INVESTIGATION INTO THE KILLING OF JESUS “MOHAWK” RODRIGUEZ, ACCORDING TO AMANDA DILLON, IN HER CROSS EXAMINATION OF AGENT CHRIS FROST, DPS NARCOTICS
Waco – Peter Caldwell is a trim, avuncular executive with a cowlick in an iron gray brush cut, wearing starched khakis and a sensible plaid shirt. He waded into the well of the 54th Criminal District Court as if it was a part of the circuit training scheme at a local health spa, set his bottled water on the witness stand rail and settled in to write his name and testify.
Employed as the General Manager of the Don Carlos Mexican Restaurant in the Central Texas Marketplace next door to the former Twin Peaks location, he answered lead prosecutor Michael Jarrett’s first question in a hearty baritone with a flat, midwestern affect.
“How would you describe your business on Sunday afternoons?”
“Great!”
And there you have it, the word that reverberates through all the testimony about the biker bar wars so heavily emphasized during the first two weeks of testimony in the first Twin Peaks trial for engaging in organized criminal activity.
Business.
Jake Carrizal is clearly charged and tried first in this massive series of felony trials because the shooting started when he rode in at the head of a file of fellow Bandidos astride his gleaming Harley-Davidson, looking for a place to park on March 17, 2015, and no less than 15 to 20 guys rat packed him before he got off the scooter.
In that part of the crowd, a president of the Hill County Cossacks wearing Black and Gold colors was shot in the neck with a handgun; the bullet exited through his neck. A prospect he had watching the bikes, a man named Clifford Pearce who was formerly a Bandido, got shot in the thorax; he is paralyzed from his chest down.
Both have insisted they have no idea who shot them. There’s no point in asking why. Everyone knows it’s a territorial thing in which one club or the other takes over the watering hole.
But when you listen to business men like Caldwell, you get the impression they aren’t all that happy about that.
It’s bad for business. In fact, when you listen to the testimony of a DPS Narcotics Agent named Frost and a Waco SWAT Team Sergeant named Drews, you know it’s true. They visited the location with their commanders, men who tried to persuade the Twin Peaks owner to not host biker events for that very reason.
He demurred, said he’d go his own way. He’s no longer in business.
He wisely folded his tent, moved on, and the franchiser voided his contract and his lease – on the spot, after all the shots were fired and the bodies fell bloody and limp.
Not good.
Jarrett’s next question to Caldwell: “Do you get a lot of people on Sunday afternoons after church?” Caldwell said he does. Both grinned. Code. Business man for, “Hey, I’ve got a lot of money tied up in this location. Can’t afford to let some bunch of goons run my business off…”
He has a 16-camera security system, it’s purpose, according to his answer to the next question, is to “secure our property.”
Going against the grain didn’t do his competitor any good. The name, Patel, he tried to buck authority and the authorities won, it seems. They begged him to reconsider hosting a summit meeting of two Confederation of Clubs and Independents districts at a central location in Waco. Why? There was such a high potential for violence, and they had proof, they said.
The meeting of the legislatrive council of bikers nationwide a month before in Denver declared motorcycle profiling a top priority. But anyone knows you can’t get much done if you’re fighting with each other. There was this thing about the Bandidos, colors, a bottom Texas rocker that seems important enough to fight about, and the fact that the Cossacks refuse to go to COC meetings because they won’t pay the $100 a year dues. The Bandidos have some say in it. They won’t go that route.
The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission was standing by to do an investigation. More than three disturbance calls in any given month and you’re shut down for 28 days pending an investigation. Who can stand that in a high cash flow business like hospitality and restaurant? And yet, it’s been established through testimony that there had been no disturbance calls at the Twin Peaks location.
And then the jurors saw that famous “man in the blue shirt,” from a distance, depicted on the Don Carlos system’s Channel 2, blurred, and he provided a narrative – that the guy was scratching his head. But where was he standing? In the doorway of the Don Carlos Restaurant, and what did he do? He signalled someone across the way that the Bandidos had arrived by tapping his head – twice – and then he ran like hell for the door of Don Carlos, where he sheltered in place. Just before he came inside, two guys, one with a peaked ball cap, the other with a backpack, passed his way and went inside.
It was a moment, and then the Judge recessed court for the day, told the jury to come back at 9 am. because he needs to go to a funeral and serve as a pall bearer for a dear friend.
But there were others whose business suffered, and it’s duly noted in the trial transcript.
A Midlothian bar owner called off bike nights when 10 squad cars and more than a hundred bikers from the red and gold nation and the rival black gold clique squared off for a staring contest back in 2014. The man testified he started the whole thing to augment business on a slow night, and found it was “the most frightening thing” he had ever experienced.
A Fort Worth Bar in the Riverside neighborhood closed after a man died in a fracas over the same thing – colors – and a Bandidos Chapter President caught the chain for 40 years for the killing.
In Longview, on April 1, a Nomad Chapter President of the Bandidos wisely walked away from a fight at an Applebee’s Restaurant before it could get any worse and avoided a disutrbance call and a trip to jail. But nevertheless, though no one was arrested, officers learned who was involved and a detective ran a cursory investigation to determine who was responsible. He testified about that on Wednesday.
Two roadside assaults of bikers from the Bandidos and the Cossacks left the victims bleeding from head wounsd on the same day, March 22, 2015, both caused by blows from claw hammers, a Bandido in Lorena on I-35 at about 1 pm, and a Cossack at a truck stop in Gordon, Texas, on I-20 at about 3 pm. Both cases are open to further investigation, not cleared by arrests.
What do these cases have in common? They both have people involved in them who wound up getting arrested at the Twin Peaks massacre on Sunday, March 17, 2015.
They have something else in common. In all four cases, Jake Carrizal, former vice president and present President of the Dallas Bandios, has nothing to do with any of it. Zip. Nada.
These murky images from the Don Carlos video surveillance tapes is to be seen on the presentation:
