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© REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/
A member of the Hells Angels attends the funeral of Aygun Mucuk, shot president of the Giessen chapter of the Hells Angels in Giessen, Germany, |
By
Kyle Swenson, The Washington Post
The motorcycle gang called it the “church meeting,” a cute euphemism
wrapped around business dealings federal prosecutors would later argue
were racketeering-level criminal felonies.
It was held each week.
They collected at the Mesa clubhouse, a murky bar-like space where a
jukebox leaked Steppenwolf, closed blinds hid the sun, and a 12-foot
“death head” mural spread across a wall, according to a
former member.
When the door was bolted shut, the Hells Angels inside fine-tuned
various schemes, including methamphetamine sales, indictments would
later charge. The gatherings drew a hard crowd — tattooed hog-riders
with quick triggers for violence — including, strangely, a local Charles
Schwab stockbroker.
When the serious talk was done, the party started, the Arizona Republic
reported in 2005.
On Oct. 27, 2001, as the post-meeting revelry cranked into high-gear,
a prospective Hells Angel was ordered to find some girls. He returned
with Cynthia Garcia. As she partied with the Angels, the 44-year-old
mother of six began “talking trash” about the club and its members. When
the wisecracks kept flying, the Hells Angels allegedly started beating
Garcia, an arrest affidavit written by a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives agent would later claim. They allegedly stomped
her with their boots as she lay on the clubhouse floor. They loaded the
semiconscious woman into the trunk of a car. They motored off into the
Arizona desert.
Garcia’s body was found on Halloween. She had been
stabbed nearly 30 times, and her killers had tried — and failed — to
cut off her head.
Two years after the murder, a federal
investigation called Operation Black Biscuit bulldozed into the Mesa
chapter of the Hells Angels. More than a dozen members were indicted on
federal criminal charges including drug trafficking and conspiracy. The
investigation also prompted murder charges against two Hells Angels
associates for Garcia’s death.
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| Paul Eischeid |
But one of the alleged killers, Paul Eischeid, didn’t stick around
for his day in court. He allegedly hacked off his ankle monitor and
disappeared overseas, the Phoenix New Times
reported.
Fifteen years after fleeing, Eischeid returned to Arizona last week in handcuffs to face charges related to Garcia’s death,
according to a statement
from the U.S. Marshals Service. In 2011, the fugitive was tracked down
to Buenos Aires, where he was living with an Argentine wife and son. For
the last seven years, Eischeid has fought his extradition to the United
States, drumming up support in his adopted country. His legal options
were recently all burned out. The 46-year-old is now being held in the
Maricopa County Jail. His attorneys at the Maricopa Public Defender did
not return a message for comment.
The extradition is one of the
unresolved legacies of Operation Black Biscuit. Although the
investigation was celebrated for successfully drilling into the
secretive world of a criminal motorcycle gang, the operation also was
targeted by critics as an example of government overreach.
Eischeid,
however, was unlike his co-defendants. His alleged criminal activity
was complemented by a life in the straight world. By night a motorcycle
gang member, by day he was Charles Schwab stockbroker. The
squeaky-clean-seeming side of his split personality was partly the
reason Eischeid was able to escape in 2004.
“He was unusually
handsome. He was charming. He was articulate because he was a former
stockbroker,” Kerrie Droban, author of a book on the Arizona Hells
Angels case,
told AZFamily.com. “[He] was very disarming that way and that was one of the reasons he was construed as so dangerous.”
Strip off the white-collar veneer of the finance world, and a different Eischeid emerged.
Thickset
at 5’5 and 190 pounds, his chest, back and arms were swirled over with
tattoos, according to photographs contained in court documents. The body
art included Hells Angels’s death head insignia. “Hell 666 Bound”
stretched over his lower back. ” His surname arched over his belly in
gothic ink.
Originally from Council Bluffs, Iowa, Eischeid left the state in the 1990s, the local newspaper
reported
in 2004. By 2001, he was a prospective member of the Mesa chapter, the
ATF affidavit stated — not yet an official Hells Angel, but working his
way into the ranks. But the stockbroker already had earned a reputation
within the gang.
“Amongst his peers, he was known as the go-to guy,” author Droban told
AZFamily.com.
“If you wanted someone taken care of, they called it TCB, taking care
of business, if you wanted someone taken care of, you had Paul Eischeid
do it.”
According to the ATF affidavit, Eischeid and another
member, Kevin Augustiniak, were among the Hells Angels who brutally beat
Cynthia Garcia at the Mesa clubhouse on October 27. The stockbroker’s
car was allegedly driven up to the back of the clubhouse, and Garcia’s
unconscious body was tossed in the trunk. Eischeid, Augustiniak, and a
third man — identified by the Republic as Michael Kramer — then drove
out to the desert, the government claims.
There, after dragging
Garcia into the wilderness, “Eischeid, along with the two others,
stabbed Garcia repeatedly with knives in the torso, head and neck areas
until she was dead,” the affidavit stated. Augustiniak allegedly tried
to sever the victim’s head to “make an example of her,” the document
said. The men allegedly then returned to the clubhouse, where they
burned their bloody clothes.
Not long after the murder, the pieces
of Operation Black Biscuit clicked into motion. Undercover agents began
infiltrating the Mesa chapter. But the government also found a source
on the inside. According to
the Republic,
Michael Kramer contacted an ATF agent a month after Garcia’s death. The
Hells Angel offered to become an informant. The murder sparked his
conversion.
“I got a conscience,” Kramer, a five-year veteran with
the Angels, later said in testimony in a federal courtroom. “What
happened out there in the desert was screwed up.”
But Kramer did
not initially tell his new ATF handlers about the murder or detail his
own alleged role in Garcia’s death. He only hinted he had information
about a “hypothetical” incident in Arizona, the Republic reported.
Kramer was signed up as a paid government informant, earning $500 a week
to set up gun and drug buys while the investigators watched. Despite
orders to engage in no criminal activity, the Hells Angel reportedly
continued to smoke and deal meth, and beat a man with a baseball bat
while on the government’s payroll.
Two months after joining the
investigation, Kramer told his handlers about the killing. He offered to
help authorities make a case against Eischeid and Augustiniak in return
for immunity, according to the Republic. His conversations with the two
murder suspects were recorded by authorities. In one talk
with Eischeid, Kramer reportedly brandished a pair of expensive knives
as gifts to his fellow gang member — for the next time they needed to
decapitate someone.
“I figured this time, you know, instead of
having to do it 50 times, we could just [take] one good one and a good
[expletive] twist,” he told Eischeid, referring to the Garcia murder,
the Republic reported.
“Yeah,” Eischeid replied. “These are [expletive] great knives.”
In
January 2003, Kramer took a plea deal with local authorities, agreeing
to five-years of probation for Garcia’s murder. He did no jail time.
Eischeid and Augustiniak were arrested for the killing.
When Eischeid appeared at a bail hearing, his dayside life played well before the judge, according to
“Angels of Death: Inside the Bikers’ Empire of Crime,”
a book on the case by Julian Sher and William Marsden. At the
time, Eischeid was making $3,000 a month as a stockbroker. He had
$300,000 mortgages on two homes in the area. His criminal record was
clean. “The government has a burden to show Paul Eischeid is a flight
risk,” his lawyer told the court, according to Sher and Marsden.
The
judge ruled Eischeid could wait out his criminal case from home with an
ankle monitor. Sher and Marsden reported that the next summer, after
Eischeid and other members of the chapter had been indicted on federal
RICO charges, the stockbroker threw a party at his home five miles from
where Garcia’s body was dumped.
It turned out to be a goodbye celebration. The next day, Eischeid fled the country.
Investigators
later learned a friend had applied for a passport in his name
using Eischeid’s details. The document was passed over to the murder
suspect, who used it to flee, the Phoenix New Times
reported. The friend later pleaded guilty to one charge of providing false statements in an application for a U.S. passport.
In 2007, Eischeid was added to the U.S. Marshals Service’s
“15 Most Wanted”
fugitive list. His co-defendant in the Garcia case, Augustiniak, later
pleaded guilty to a second-degree murder charge for his part in the
killing. He was given a 22 to 25 year sentence, New Times reported.
Investigators eventually tracked the fugitive down to Buenos Aires, where he was arrested in 2011.
“He put on some weight, had a goatee with the beard part down to his chest, and he’d shaved his head,” a U.S. Marshals official
said at the time. As Eischeid fought his extradition, however, his case gathered support in Argentina. An
online petition on his case, arguing the charges against him stemmed from the testimony of a paid informant. It has more than 4,000 signatures.
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