The war between the Cossacks and Bandidos began with a disagreement over the right to wear a “Texas rocker” vest patch, and the 2015 climax outside a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco had everything: fists, chains, brass knuckles, clubs, knives, and copious gunfire. Nine bikers died (some by police bullets). New York Times Magazine sent a reporter to Texas to find out why nobody was ever convicted. Two characters loom large: defense attorney Paul Looney and his trial-prep specialist, Roxanne Avery. He with his black pinstripes and cowboy boots who admits, “I could have either become a Mafioso don or a criminal defense lawyer.” She with her red-bowed Chihuahuas and an entire wall covered with mugshots and case details of all 177 defendants in the “largest roundup and mass arrest of bikers in recent American history.” They led the three-year effort that resulted in dismissals of all charges, and they helped show an allegedly corrupt district attorney to the door.
Initially, police wanted a capital murder investigation, but DA Abel Reyna—stocky, buzz-cut, tough-on-crime—wanted to arrest everyone who was “wearing colors” for “engaging in organized criminal activity.” However, many defendants were casual hangers-on with no ties to the criminal side of biker life, such as Patrick Harris, a grad student and volunteer clown with the real "Patch" Adams. Criticizing the prosecution’s approach, Looney told the Times, “Justice is individualized. There’s no class-action prosecution.” In Reyna’s defense, the article notes that murder would have been hard to prove given the chaotic nature of things. Then again, it turns out Reyna was the subject of multiple FBI investigations involving public corruption, cocaine use, and an illegal gambling ring, among other things. The first defendant stood trial in 2017, but the jury was deadlocked, and it was judged a mistrial. In the year that followed, under pressure from all sides, Reyna was compelled to dismiss all other charges. Learn more about Looney and the clients on Avery’s wall in the New York Times Magazine. (More Waco, Texas stories.)
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