But on the second day of that client’s incarcer-
ation, Looney fi led a motion to suppress the evi-
dence, and the U.S. attorney’s offi ce concurred,
and the client went free. ‘‘I got shut out early,’’
he says, still sounding rueful. With the bikers,
he told Avery, he didn’t want to miss his chance.
Photographs by Eli Durst for The New York Times The New York Times Magazine 41
TOP: THE LAWYER PAUL LOONEY IN HOUSTON.
BOTTOM: THE TRIAL-PREPARATION SPECIALIST ROXANNE AVERY WITH HER CHIHUAHUA BONNIE
IN NORMAN, OKLA. OPENING PAGES: A WALL IN AVERY’S HOME OFFICE.Less than three months before the Waco brawl,
the Texas Department of Public Safety issued an
internal memo warning that the Bandidos were
‘‘displeased’’ with the Cossacks. On March 22,
a man named Arthur Young stopped for gas in
Gordon, Texas, wearing his Cossacks vest; whilehe was fi lling up his Harley-Davidson, he said,
between 10 and 15 men in Bandidos vests and
T-shirts pulled up and ordered him to remove
it. When he refused, they beat him with fi sts and
a claw hammer, leaving him with a head wound
requiring 12 staples. The same day, a group of
Cossacks forced a Bandido off I-35 and beat him
with a chain, pipe and baton before stealing his
motorcycle. Those incidents, the D.P.S. bulletin
concluded, ‘‘confi rm that tensions between the
Bandidos and the Cossacks remain high in the area
and can escalate at any time.’’
One Cossack (he requested anonymity; call
him W., his fi rst initial) received his own warn-
ing about the meeting. He can rattle off the date
he joined the club without hesitation, like one
of his kids’ birthdays — and by the time of the
meeting, he had become a sergeant-at-arms, in
charge of security, which made his presence in
Waco mandatory. W. called his team of enforcers
‘‘coolers,’’ a homage to ‘‘Road House,’’ the Patrick
Swayze movie about bouncers. ‘‘We’re not bounc-
ing heads,’’ he said. ‘‘We’re cooling them. Until
you put us in a position where we can’t.’’ A source
called him, the night before the meeting, to say
that ‘‘something might kick up.’’
On Sunday morning, a group gathered at
the clubhouse of the Bandidos’ Dallas chapter.
It included Jake Carrizal, the 33-year-old vice
president of the chapter, a railroad engineer
with copious tattoos and a long beard, the type
of guy who wouldn’t look entirely out of place
selling artisanal sourdough at a farmers’ market.
Earlier, he sent a text: ‘‘Bring your tools, guys.’’
That morning, he slipped a Derringer two-shot
into his back pocket holster, hidden by a vest
with patches reading ‘‘Expect No Mercy’’ and
‘‘Malandro’’ (Spanish slang for ‘‘bad guy’’), along
with a pair of SS lightning bolts. (Outlaw motor-
cycle clubs are exclusively male and also tend
to be segregated into Black and white groups,
though the Bandidos have Latino members, such
as Carrizal.) Later, asked about the vest in court,
Carrizal insisted: ‘‘You’re using our patches and
our culture literally against us. It’s not meant
to be as literal as law enforcement is taking it.’’
The Waco Police Department did indeed seem
to be taking the bikers both literally and seriously.
Earlier in the month, Jeff Rogers, a detective with
the gang-intelligence unit, sent out his own email
warning colleagues that ‘‘if the Cossacks attempt
to attend this meeting or show up at this location,
the potential for violence is very high.’’ Shortly after
Kelly Bowden, a 19-year-old bartender at Twin
Peaks, arrived for her lunch shift, her manager
told her that the cops had called corporate and
tried to get them to cancel the meeting entirely.
I guess they didn’t realize we’re a franchise store,
the manager said.
The restaurant was located in a sprawling
strip mall alongside big-box chains such as Bed
Bath & Beyond. The Cossacks began arriving
early, along with so-called support clubs, smaller