Sonny Barger, biker outlaw and founder of Hells Angels, dies at 83

Sonny Barger, the bigger-than-life godfather of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, equal parts brawler, bully, braggart, rule breaker and shrewd huckster of his own outlaw mystique, died June 29 at his home in California. He was 83.

A statement on his official Facebook page read: “If you are reading this message, you’ll know that I’m gone. I’ve asked that this note be posted immediately after my passing.”

His former lawyer, Fritz Clapp, confirmed the death and said the cause was liver cancer.

For decades, the stocky, muscular Barger stood not only as the founder of the original Oakland, Calif., Angels chapter in 1957, but for decades after that also as the public face of a nationwide counterculture tribe of bearded, denimclad road warriors memorialized in literature and film - roaring down the open highway and through crossroads towns, shocking the locals with their boisterous, often menacing presence.

It was a rowdy, frequently lawless brotherhood bound, in no particular order, by machismo, tattoos, winged deathhead insignia, booze, dope, rides to nowhere on thundering Harley-Davidson hogs and a lust for the unfettered freedom found on the open road.

“Discover your limits by exceeding them,” Mr. Barger urged.

Woven into the Hells Angels history was a tradition of crime and violence - much of it involving Mr. Barger, a fact he boastfully acknowledged. He once referred to himself as belonging to a band of “card-carrying felons.”

He was convicted in 1988 of conspiracy to kill members of a rival club in Kentucky and blow up their headquarters, serving five years in federal prison. A confessed cocaine addict who supported his habit by selling heroin in the 1960s and 1970s, he served stints totaling eight years for assorted drug and firearms charges.

The Hells Angels - as a corporate entity with chapters from California to New York - faced incessant federal investigation on criminal enterprise and racketeering offenses.