Notes and details about the subjects: ages, road

names (Cheech, Chain, Drama, Sidetrack, Saint,

Mad Dog, Pee Paw, Bubba, Bubba Earl, Bashful,

Yogi, Reno, Creeper, Grumpy Dan), club affi l-

iations, ranks, descriptions of injuries (‘‘Bullet

entered neck, partially exited’’; ‘‘Paralyzed from

the waist down’’; ‘‘DEAD’’) and any other perti-

nent information (‘‘I met him March 2018’’; ‘‘9mm

Glock’’; ‘‘U.S. Army — 2 tours Iraq’’; ‘‘Convicted

felon’’; ‘‘Shot dog?’’; ‘‘Did not see anything’’; ‘‘Grad-

uate Baylor University w/ English degree’’). Point

to a random photograph, and Avery will generally

be able to squint and tell you something about the

biker in question.

‘‘There’s a rumor that he killed somebody,’’ she

said one morning two years ago, tapping a face. ‘‘I

don’t think it’s true. I know these guys.’’ She wore

a large black onyx ring and brilliant cherry red

lipstick; one of her Chihuahuas, Bonnie, padded by

in a white dress with a red bow. Moving to a large

computer monitor, Avery began to click through

crime-scene photographs, many of them graphic

close-ups of dead bodies. ‘‘So he’s got a gunshot

wound that you see is in his face and his eye,’’ she

noted, pausing at a particularly grisly image. ‘‘The

other one entered through his back and exited out.’’

Avery and her boss make a colorful duo. Looney

speaks in a mellifl uous Texas drawl, wears bolo

ties and cowboy boots and pilots his own plane to

court hearings outside Houston. ‘‘I’ve always been

this close to being a criminal myself,’’ he told me.

‘‘I could have either become a Mafi oso don or a

criminal defense lawyer, but there was no place

that I could apply my personality eff ectively except

those two places.’’ Looney has appeared before

courts in 41 states; he has done ‘‘a whole bunch

of work’’ for drug cartels, he explained, and their

people get arrested all over the country. Avery likes

to make ‘‘Better Call Paul’’ jokes.

They met in 2002, when Avery needed a lawyer

herself. After her husband, an OB-GYN, died of a

heart attack, she hired other doctors and contin-

ued to own and operate his clinic — until a compet-

itor reported her to local authorities for practicing

medicine without a license. Her best friend put her

in touch with Looney, who fl ew out and cleared up

the matter. Avery began to work for him in 2013,

writing news releases and sitting second chair at

trial as his discovery expert. She was initially put

off by the idea of defending people who might well

be guilty. But she had always been drawn to true-

crime stories — her grandparents’ farm in Kansas

wasn’t far from the Clutters’, made infamous by

‘‘In Cold Blood,’’ and her mother used to tell her

stories about how nobody in town liked Truman

Capote — so the job wound up suiting her.

She was the one who told Looney about the

Waco brawl in the fi rst place. In May 2015, the

bikers were gathering for a meeting of the Texas

Confederation of Clubs and Independents, a coa-

lition of motorcycle enthusiasts that lobbies the

state government over things like helmet laws.

These meetings were typically low-key aff airs; the

40 2.27.22

I

Waco event was planned for 1 p.m. on a Sunday, at

a Hooters-style chain restaurant called Twin Peaks,

where the waitresses wear lumberjack-plaid halter

tops. But this meeting was preceded by rumblings

of an escalating feud between two of the state’s

biggest ‘‘outlaw’’ motorcycle clubs, the Cossacks

and the Bandidos.

Moments after the Bandidos arrived at Twin

Peaks, a fi stfi ght broke out, followed by gun-

fi re, then utter havoc. One Waco police offi cer

described the aftermath as looking like something

‘‘out of a video game.’’ Bloodstained concrete.

Guns, knives, brass knuckles and batons scat-

tered across the scene. Nine dead, 20 wounded.

‘‘In 34 years of law enforcement,’’ a spokesperson

for the Waco Police Department told reporters,

it was ‘‘the most violent crime scene I have ever

been involved in.’’ The police ended up arresting

177 bikers, an event described in this newspaper

as ‘‘what appears to be the largest roundup and

mass arrest of bikers in recent American history.’’

The event quickly became a national story. Like

the average news consumer, Looney fi rst reacted

to all this with astonishment: Sunday afternoon,

gunfi re everywhere, nine dead?

But as he followed the narrative over the next

week, he became suspicious. The 177 arrests

seemed awfully high, and all the bikers, regard-

less of the evidence against them, were slapped

with identical felony charges and million-dollar

bonds. ‘‘I just couldn’t believe it,’’ Looney told

me. ‘‘It defi ed credibility.’’ While the D.A.’s offi ce

issued news releases and mug shots of the bik-

ers were splashed across newspapers throughout

the state, Looney said he ‘‘saw nobody stepping

forward to counter the narrative,’’ one that was

‘‘completely damning’’ the accused. ‘‘And I just felt

like somebody needed to get in there with a bunch

of resources and change the narrative and get to

the bottom of what’s happening.’’

The following weekend, Houston experienced

catastrophic fl ooding, which closed the court-

houses and suddenly freed up Looney’s schedule.

‘‘So I gathered up Roxanne and told her: ‘Let’s

go to Waco. We’ve got to fi nd a client,’ ’’ Looney

recalled. Avery, who remembers herself being the

instigator of the trip, worked her phone over the

course of the three-hour drive, eventually making

contact with the mother of a man named William

English, who was arrested in the roundup along

with his wife, Morgan. William was 33, a laid-off

welder and Marine Corps veteran who served

in Iraq. His motorcycle club, the Distorted, had

seven total members. His only previous arrest

was for driving under the infl uence; Morgan

had no criminal record. Because of bad weath-

er, they drove to the C.O.C. meeting in a Nissan

Sentra. They hadn’t even put their names on the

restaurant wait-list yet when the shooting started.

Looney had gone to Waco before, including

once, back in the 1990s, to represent a defendant

in the siege of the Branch Davidian compound.

‘‘I wanted in on that trial so badly,’’ he recalls.

f you ask Paul Looney, a Houston defense attor-
ney, about the Twin Peaks biker case, he’ll tell you
there’s one person who knows more about it than
anyone else alive: his trial-preparation specialist,
Roxanne Avery. An entire wall of her home offi ce
in Norman, Okla., is covered with wallet-size mug
shots of the nearly 200 bikers arrested, as well as
photographs of the nine men who died that day,
seven years ago, after a violent brawl in a Waco
parking lot. Each picture is layered with Post-it