Hells Angels leader Sonny Barger dies
Facebook post notes life of adventure
Sonny Barger, the face of the Hells Angels who was instrumental in the outlaw motorcycle club’s rise from a small gang of California outcasts into a countercultural force, has died. He was 83.
His death was announced on his Facebook page Thursday, in a post that Barger asked to be published “immediately after my passing.” The cause was cancer, according to the post, which did not say where he died.
“I’ve lived a long and good life filled with adventure,” Barger said in the post. “And I’ve had the privilege to be part of an amazing club.”
As the fearsome leader of the Hells Angels, Barger was among those who shaped the image of the club, and by extension of motorcycling, as the dominion of people who are not to be messed with. Chased by the law for decades, he spent time in prison on drug charges but beat several other charges.
Barger was a founder of the Oakland chapter of the club in 1957, nine years after the first chapter was formed in Fontana, Calif., according to the club’s history. Soon after, he took over as the national president when Otto Friedli, the founder of the original chapter, went to prison.
Barger and other Hells Angels leaders have often said the club’s reputation as a seedy crime syndicate was undeserved, and that it should not be held accountable for the actions of individual members. But the group’s rise came in spite of law enforcement’s efforts to tame it, with the authorities seeing it as a dangerous menace.
Barger made occasional film and television appearances, including a cameo as himself in the 1967 Jack Nicholson film “Hells Angels on Wheels.” In 2010, he appeared in the FX drama “Sons of Anarchy.”
Ralph Barger was born in Modesto, Calif., on Oct. 8, 1938. The post announcing his death said his wife, Zorana, was with him at the end. Information about other survivors was not available.
Barger was diagnosed with throat cancer in the early 1980s and had his vocal cords removed.
In his later years, and in contrast with the outlaw image he had cultivated for himself and the club, Barger became fiercely protective of the Hells Angels’ intellectual property while selling a wide array of merchandise online. In 2013, at 75, he described in a sworn deposition what he would do if he saw someone wearing an unofficial shirt bearing Hells Angels trademarks.
“I would say: ‘Look, we can do this two ways. You can give me the shirt and I’ll give you a legitimate one.’ Or if the guy says, ‘Hey, none of your business where I got it,’” Barger continued, “I’d beat him up and take it.”