10 Real Criminals Who Traveled by Motorcycle

bikecriminals Crime doesn’t pay, but sometimes it looks really cool. Enter the motorcycle. With its reputation for danger and its badass looks, even the most radical criminals have appropriated the edgy machine into their ensemble. Additionally, the organized crime syndicates of many outlaw motorcycle gangs all over the globe have contributed to many arrests. Even the Honda has a bike called the Bandit. Lending no help to the motorcycle’s rebellious reputation, check out these 10 real criminals who traveled by motorcycle.

Ralph “Sonny” Barger

The most classic example of a motorcycle outlaw, Barger is the stuff of criminal legend. He was present at the infamous Rolling Stones/Jefferson Airplane concert in California in 1969, where several people were killed and hundreds were injured. A larger-than-life character, Barger is treated in Hunter S. Thompson’s Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, as well as Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. This prime, and possibly most famous, example of a criminal on a bike also spent several years in Folsom Prison for a 1972 narcotics possession charge, as well as four years in a different federal prison for conspiring to bomb a rival gang’s meeting place.
New York Pagans

In 2002, 73 members of the Pagans, a motorcycle gang rival of the Hells Angels, were indicted on racketeering charges in New York, after a Long Island fight between the two gangs left more than 10 men injured and one dead.
Che Guevara

Some of the bad guys aren’t really that bad. The Cuban revolutionary, considered an enemy of American capitalism, was an avid motorcyclist. In 1950 and 1951, the guerilla hero took some time off of college to go on life-changing motorcycle trips around Latin America and learning of what he called “capitalist exploitation.” The Marxist, who was executed in Bolivia, ostensibly by the CIA, even wrote a chronicle of his journeys — a book, simply titled The Motorcycle Diaries. The book has also been made into a film.
Decko

In the powerful, beautiful, 16 mm 1976 Japanese documentary Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Decko is the youth that’s profiled as he’s going to court for participating in a group that destroyed a taxi on the streets of Japan. The classic film depicts the fallout with and chagrin of Decko’s parents, as well as his love of his motorcycle and a portrait of the semi-outlaw Black Emperors.
Canadian Hells Angels

You know the ones. Those badass Harley riders who all have the matching jackets? Those are the Hells Angels. Their slogan in Canada is “we are the people your parents warned you about,” and for some 2006 members of Los Bandidos, that saying couldn’t be more true. In 2006, Wayne Kellistine and four others were arrested and charged for the murders of eight Ontario Bandidos, a rival outlaw motorcycle gang.
Mongol Motorcycle Gang

In October of 2008, California officials arrested upwards of 60 members of the Mongols — a Latino outlaw motorcycle gang formed in response to the homogenous Hells Angels — in a large-scale raid and warrant round-up. Charges of murder, racketeering, and assault contributed to the hit, and the gang’s former leader, Ruben Cavazos (internally embattled within the Mongols due to his decision to recruit common street thugs with no interest in bikes for the motorcycle gang) was also incarcerated.
Rodney Lee Rollness

In 2007, a Washington state court convicted Rodney Lee Rollness of murder, racketeering, and black market operations, along with three of his gang member cohorts. Of several issues, one surrounding Rollness and friend Joshua Binder’s conviction was the 2001 murder of Michael Walsh, a poseur — falsely claiming to be a Hells Angel — and getting killed for it. The jury deliberated for 12 days.
Harry Joseph “Taco” Bowman

Taco Bowman was the one-time leader of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, which had several chapters throughout the United States through his tenure as leader. The Outlaws were (and perhaps still are) a large-scale rival of another outlaw motorcycle gang (acronymed OMG by the FBI), the Hells Angels. Bowman is responsible for crimes in Florida, ordering bombings in Illinois, and a general life of gangster crime. The tattooed biker was on the FBI’s most wanted list in 1998, and is currently serving two life sentences for racketeering and murder.
Ronnie Leibowitz

Dubbed the “Motorcycle Bandit” by the mass media, Israeli bank robber Ronnie Leibowitz traveled by beautiful cafe cycle Moto Guzzi and robbed more than 20 banks in the Tel Aviv metroplex before being arrested and tried, and eventually seen (due to appeals) by the Supreme Court of Israel. Leibowitz would enter and exit bank branches on his Moto Guzzi, then drive the cycle into a walled-in getaway truck. The criminal, whose identity was kept secret, partially due to his donning of a helmet to commit his crimes, immediately became Israel’s top celebrity before he was apprehended in 1990.
The Co-Ed Killer

John Norman Collins, a motorcycle enthusiast and petty bike part thief, was convicted of murder in Michigan in 1970 and sentenced to life without parole. He is thought to be the perpetrator of all save one of the highly publicized and gruesome “Michigan murders,” which terrorized parts of the state in the late ’60s. Collins has been dubbed “The Co-Ed Killer.”