Were These The Founding Fathers of The Brand?

Let us go back to the trial testimony of Paul S. Dobreff, program manager in California Institute for Men at Chino and in 1972 prison gang expert witness for the prosecution in the murder trial of Fred Mendrin, member of the Aryan Brotherhood, and Donald Hale, member of the American Nazi Party.

According to Dobreff the Aryan Brotherhood was formed in Folsom by Red Fenton, Edward Vaughn, Gino Maher and the brothers John and James Schreckengost. But who were they?

Red Fenton
The writer and former convict Edward Bunker knew of Red Fenton and sort of crossed paths with him. Bunker writes in his prison memoirs:

Locked up in San Quentin was Red Fenton who had killed a man in San Quentin fifteen years earlier and had been in the attempted breakout of Folsom in ’61, when the visiting girls’ choir was taken hostage. After going to court and getting a new five year to life sentence, and spending several years in the Folsom adjustment center, he had been transferred to San Quentin and given a chance on the mainline. His reputation preceded him. Weaklings were asking for protection by the score, so he had been locked up and remained locked up for two years. L.S. (Red) Nelson, San Quentin’s Warden, wanted to get rid of him and was willing to take me in exchange. So Red Fenton came back to Folsom and I rode the bus to San Quentin, which was always my joint.

Edward Bunker is not always the most accurate prison historian. But 27-year old career criminal Farrel H. “Red” Fenton did in October 1960 stab fellow San Quentin convict Victor Ybarra to death in the prison gymnasium while they and some hundred other convicts were watching a broadcast of the fifth game in the 1960 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Pittsburgh Pirate. And Red Fenton did participate in the hostage taking of a visiting choir in Folsom, but that was in 1962 and the hostages were not girls, but male singers. Red Fenton was one of three kidnappers. The two others were none other than Edward Vaughn and Edward “Gino” Maher.

The Taking of the Choir
On November 26 1962 the 16-member visiting Bethel Choir had just finished their first hymn in Folsom’s prison chapel, when the three lifers armed with homemade weapons rushed in. Conrad N. Becker was a deeply religious convict. Becker was also a big man. He rose from his seat and with a “Praise God” rushed the attackers. Stabbed he fell mortally wounded to ground, but rose to his feet and again tried to stop his fellow convicts before the 41- year old, convicted burglar finally collapsed.

Thanks to Conrad Becker’s heroic acts most of the choir members had time to escape through the chapel’s sidedoors. Six choir members and Folsom’s prison chaplain were taken hostage and hustled into the chaplain’s office by the three armed desperados. For three and a half hour Red Fenton negotiated with the warden of Folsom and with Richard Magee, director of California’s prison system. Magee promised to ask the district attorny not to seek the mandatory death penalty for lifers convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. After Folsom convict Zachary Vaughn, brother of Edward Vaughn, implored the trio to trust Magee on his word, they gave up their weapons and surrendered.

Below: (L to R) Edward Vaughn, Gino Maher and Red Fenton after they released their hostages. Inserted: Murdered inmate Conrad Becker who tried to save the hostages.

Afterwards a brief press conference with the three convicts was arranged, but they had not much to say. They had no real complains against the prison and wouldn’t comment on their motive for the hostage taking. It couldn’t have been a real escape attempt because any convict in California knew of the “no hostage”-policy of the state’s prison system, enacted in 1937 after the warden of Folsom was taken hostage and murdered in a bloody escape attempt.

Despite the effort of director Magee the district attorny charged Fenton, Vaughn and Maher with first degree murder of Conrad Becker. According to press reports Becker had fingered Maher as the stabber, but the prosecutor could in court not prove who did the deed and in April 1962 got a hung jury. In June 1963 all three convicts pleaded guilty to second degree murder, just as Red Fenton had done in April 1961 in the Ybarra murder case.

Edward Vaughn
Though Red Fenton was one murder conviction ahead of both Edward Vaugh and Gino Maher, Zachary Vaughn’s brother seems to have been the real lifetaker of the three. In March 1962 he stabbed Benny Slankard to death in California Medical Facility at Vacaville, the first such incident in the guidance center. Edward Vaughn succesfully pleaded innonce in that case. In June 1967 he stabbed his cellmate in Folsom, Delbert “Joe” Blow, to death. For that Edward Vaughn was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. In December that same year Edward Vaughn and Ronald Lancaster assaulted a Folsom guard in an effort to get to fellow convict Fred Castillo. For that Edward Vaughn got sentenced to death in 1968.

During Vaughn’s trial for his life Red Felton took the stand and claimed that it was he who had stabbed Conrad Becker to death. The prosecutor rebutted with a confession to several armed robberies and first degree murder of both Becker and Benny Slankard, written in 1964 by Edward Vaughn. The admitted killer then asked the jury for the death sentence and got it. California’s supreme court affirmed his guilt, but reversed the sentence. Vaughn defended in 1969 himself in the new penalty trial and lost. In 1974 California’s supreme court affirmed the sentence, but commuted it to life in prison since California two years earlier had abolished the death sentence.

Ronald Lancaster, who was desribed as the “youngest and smallest” prisoner in Folsom, was tried in a seperate trial. Edward Vaughn did his utmost to take full blame for the young convict’s action during the incident, but Lancaster was nevertheless found guilty of assault on an officer and holding him hostage. Everybody agreed that Vaughn had been the driving force and that his motive was revenge for some snitching he thought Fred Castillo had done. And Edward Vaughn was almost certainly the driving force behind the conspiracy between members of the Aryan Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia and the American Nazi Party that in 1972 finally killed Castillo in Chino. During the subsequent murder trial Vaughn testified that he in 1968 had helped organize the Aryan Brotherhood in San Quentin.

The Schreckengosts
In his prison memoirs Edward Bunker also briefly mentions a certain Shorty Schreckengost. According to Bunker this convict had once been assaigned to paint the interior of California’s gas chamber in San Quentin, and prison rumors had it that he had signed his name under one of the chairs. If the story is true it may say something about James “Shorty” Schreckengost. As a young convict he and Robert Harmon ran a protection rackett in Soledad. When one prisoner didn’t give in they stabbed him, Harmon in the back and Schreckengost in the chest and abdomen. Their victim survived, but as a lifer Harmond was sentenced to death and in August 1960 executed in the gas chamber.

Shorty Schreckengost went to prison in 1956 for writing bad checks. In 1961 his younger brother John went to prison for first degree robbery. In 1966 they were both in San Quentin and charged with a brutal attempted murder of another convict. Shortly after their acquittal John injured his hand while beating yet another convict. In 1970 he was out on the street, leading a gang of armed robbers. He was caught after a ferocious gun battle that left one policeman and two robbers dead, one by his own hand. In 1978 older brother Shorty was injured in Folsom when he was shot with non-lethal ammunition while fighting a Mexican convict.

In January 1980 former Folsom convict Duane Williams fingered in court Shorty Schreckengost as the Aryan Brotherhood member who in 1974 introduced him in Folsom to Hells Angels leader Ralph “Sonny” Barger. According to the trial’s prosecutor Shorty had since left the Aryan Brotherhood.

To sum it all up, it seems that Paul Dobreff was right when he pointed Edward Vaughn out as one of the founding members of the Aryan Brotherhood, and Dobreff may also have been right about Shorty Schreckengost who at least was an early member of the Brand. But no evidence seems to corroborate that Red Fenton, John Schreckengost or Gino Maher – who’s only claim to fame was the hostage taking in 1962 – were members of the Aryan Brotherhood, let alone founding members. And almost all sources claim that the Aryan Brotherhood was formed in San Quentin and therefore not in Folsom.

Galloway and Mahone
However, we are here dealing with a prison underworld where court testimony is not neccessarily the truth. Let’s recall that the defense for Fred Mendring and Donald Hale did their outmost to have Paul Dobreff’s testimony thrown out of court. When that strategy didn’t succeed the defense called Edward Vaugn and Robert Galloway. Galloway testified that he formed the Aryan Brotherhood with 8 to 10 other convicts, and Vaughn testified that he in 1968 helped organize the group in San Quentin. So in actuality the testimonies from Vaughn and Galloway do not rule out that the Aryan Brotherhood was formed prior to 1968, nor that the secret brotherhood was formed in Folsom before it reached San Quentin.

Edward Bunker claims that Red Fenton was housed in Folsom adjustment center for years after the hostage taking in 1962. We may assumed that during the mid-sixties Edward Vaughn and Gino Maher were housed the same place. And it is quit possibile that the violent Schreckgost brothers during the same timeframe were transferred from San Quentin to the adjustment center in Folsom. And we know for a fact that Robert Galloway was housed in Folsom’s adjustment center, at least in the early 1970s.

In Folsom’s adjustment center Galloway was housed with Jack “Red” Mahone, who both former gang investigator Ricahed Valdemar and former gang member Ramon “Mundo” Mendoza claim was a co-founder of the Aryan Brotherhood. Now, if it could be estabished that all these convics – Red Fenton, Gino Maher, Edward Vaughn, John Schreckengost, Shorty Schreckengost, Bob Galloway and Red Mahone – were housed together in Folsom’s adjustment center sometime in the mid-1960s, we may very well have identified most of the 8 to 10 founding members of the Aryan Brotherhood.

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The Stabbing of Edmund Balch

“This is it, Eddy!” Those should have been the last words heard by Folsom inmate Edmund Balch after two other inmates stabbed him in June 1975. They left him for dead on the floor with 28 stab wounds and a knife protruding from his face. But Eddy Balch was done of sterner stuff than most. He rose up, yanked the knife from his face and staggered after help.

Edmund Balch, sent to state prison on a voluntary manslaughter conviction, had only been on the mainline for about a month when he was stabbed. He was the chief suspect of a stabbing in Susanville Conservation Center and a stabbing in Folsom a year later, and had been locked up since the last incident. After his own stabbing Eddy Balch broke the convict code and fingered two whites as his assailants who both had prior convictions for assault on other inmates.

Michael Carmichael was serving a life sentence for stabbing another inmate. Convicted robber Joseph Eugene Waters was sent to San Quentin in 1972 and convicted the next year of assault on another inmate. Carrmichael and Waters were tried together in April 1976 for the attempted murder of Eddy Balch. Both claimed innocence.

The Joe Remiro Angle
In court Eddy Balch expalined that he thought the motive behind the attack was that he had snitched in apparently a third stabbing he’d been involved in. During cross examination by the defense Balch claimed that he was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. He also claimed to have been part of an Aryan Brotherhood-Mexican Mafia plot to kill inmate George Ulatowski, convicted in 1965 of forcible rape, for snitching on a certain Joseph Remiro.

Remiro had served in Vietnam as a paratrooper in the famous 101st Airborne. Home and hooked on drugs he joined the leftist Vietnam Veterans Against the War. From there he went to the more radical Venceremos who did a lot of so-called prison work (recruting prisoners for the revolution). Remiro visited inmate George Ulatowski on August 25 1973. At the same time Remiro and others were building the terrorist group Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), that in November 1973 assasinated a black school superintendt in Oakland. Two month later Joseph Remiro was arrested after a firefight with the police. On June 23, 1975 – a week after the stabbing of Eddy Balch – Joe Remiro was convicted as one of the Oakland assasins.

The SLA was closely aligned with the Black Guerilla Family, the arch enemy of both the Aryan Brotherhood and the Mexican Mafia. It seems a bit strange if these two organisations should have conspired to kill an inmate basically on behalf of a hated foe. But this seems really to have been the case. According the defense for Mike Carmichael and Joe Waters the plot to kill inmate Ulatowski had not only been a real thing; Eddy Balch was in deep trouble with his own because he had refused to do the killing.

Rudy the Brute
The defense also pointed to “Rudy and his friends” as somebody with a motive to try and kill Eddy Balch. According to them Balch had earlier stabbed Rudy the Brute, an inmate with “a fearsome reputation in Folsom”, but had bungled the attack and was therefore open for retaliation.

Rudolph Hoskins was already known as “The Brute” when he in the early sixties roamed the streets of San Francisco with other black juvenile delinquents. At thirteen he molested a six-year old girl. At fourteen he beat up a woman and at fifteen he raped a sixteen-year old girl. After each crime he was sent to various institutions, but always let out on the streets again. At seventeen he weighed 200 pounds, had a violent temper and an IQ between 60 and 65.

In March 1963 the 17-year old brute was paid 15 dollars for blinding a man by throwing lye in his face. Rudy Hoskins was tried as an adult and sentenced to five years to life in state prison. Early on he may have joined the Black Muslims, but his abnormal sexual drive seems to have barred him from any lasting membership in a structured prison group. Instead he became an allmost legendary prison rapist that even raped a member of the black Crips gang. In February 1973 Rudy the Brute was stabbed one time in the back and one time in shoulder while eating in the mess hall in Folsom.

The Gang Leader
It was implied that Frank Duane Tubach was a powerfull gang leader. He testifed that Eddy Balch had fingered Mike Carmichael and Joe Waters because they were frinds of Tubach. In reality Balch hadn’t seen his assailants but wanted revenge against Tubach.

It was a complicated story that went back to March 1971 when Tubach was stabbed in San Quentin. He was transferred to Susanville Conservation Center where he thought he recognized one of his assailants. Before he could settle the score Tubach was transferred out of Susanville and Eddie Balch took it upon himself to avenge Frank Tubach. The suspected assailant was properly stabbed, but it later transpired that it was a case of mistanken identity. Balch was now in hot water and asked Frank Tubach for protection, but Tubach wouln’t go further than let it be known that Balch had acted in good faith. This Balch never forgave him.

Frank Tubach was himself severely stabbed in 1975 and had met Edmund Balch at the medical center at Vacaville, where Balch also was treated for his stab wounds. It was at Vacaville that Balch had told Tubach about why he had fingered the two friends of Tubach. According to Tubach.

The Debt
Inmate Kenneth Ray Wilkes testified that it was he and inmate Van Purcell that had stabbed Eddy Balch. The motive had beeen unpaid debt. Wilkes gave a detailed explanation about how things worked in prison. If you didn’t reacted decisively against unwilling debtors you’d been seen as an easy prey and sooner og later robbed blind by other inmates. They had to stab Balch.

Inmate Van Purcell had been in and out of prison since 1967. His speciality was armed robbery of grocery stores. During his last stint in freedom he shot and killed a grocery store owner. He also hit himself in the leg during the process. He was caught when his 19 year old girlfriend at gunpoint tried to force a hotelowner to get medical aid for her wounded beau. Purcell was sent to Folsom in 1974 and in January 1976 stabbed to death by an unknown assassin. Four month later the trial against Carmichael and Waters began.

One inmate, like Edmund Balch in protective costudy, testified he saw the stabbing of Edmund Balch and that it indeed was done by Carmichael and Waters. Another inmate testified that he also saw the stabbing and that it wasn’t done by the two accused, but he wouldn’t say who it then was. Other inmates gave alibis for Mike Carmichael and Joe Waters, and when it all was said and done the jury acquitted them on reasonable doubt.

As mentioned above the defense claimed that Edmund Balch was in deep trouble with the Aryan Brotherhood, thereby implying that others than Carmichael and Waters had reason to stab Balch. It therefore seems odd that during the trial it was never disclosed that “Silent Mike” Carmichael, “Broadway Joe” Waters, “Old Folks” Wilkes and “Big Frank” Tubach all were known members of the Brand.

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The Prison Pinchushions

Back in March 2006 “Tijuana Jailer”, an anymous former prison gang investigator, commented on the blog In The Hat:

Another El Paso, Texas, inmate who incurred EME’s wrath was a chatty inmate by the name of Frankie Padilla. He was later nicknamed the Mexican pincushion (the nickname “Pincushion” was already owned by one Roger Dale Smith, a white inmate whose torso bore over a hundred stab wounds) when he was stabbed over 70 times by AB’s “New York” Crane and EME’s Marcello “Gabby” Baeza.

20-year old Roger Dale Smith was sent to state prison in 1965 for attempted rape of another inmate in San Joakin County Jail. He was a troublesome prisoner and ended up in Soledad’s maximum security ‘O’-wing. It was here that Smith on April 30 1967 for the first time was stabbed almost to death. He was hit more than fifty times, but survived covered with more than a hundred scars.

Four other young convicts were tried in the summer of 1967 for the attempted murder of Roger Smith. Ralph “Chuko” Chagon, Marines “Rabbit” Meyers and Michael “Tank” Noah were all members of the Nazi clique in Soledad. Ernest “Neto” Garcia was a member of the Mexican Mafia. Garcia got a hung jury and Meyers life in prison. Both Chagon and Noah were sentenced to death.

In August 1968 Roger Smith was himself convicted of attempted murder, after he four month earlier in Chino had stabbed another inmate six times in the back. I April 1969 he again faced Rabbit Meyers and Tank Noah in a court room. All three convictions from the Soledad-case had been overtuned on appeal. Chuko Chagon never made it to the new trial because of insanity. After Smith’s testimony he threw a wooden pointer at Meyers and Noah. Both went beserk and it took about a dozen guards to overpower them. They were sentenced in the Smith-case to prison terms on lesser charges, and Tank Noah later rose to prominence in the newly formed Aryan Brotherhood.

Below: Pincushion interviewed December 1974 in San Quentin’s Adjustment Center.

In a split decision in October 1969 an appeals court overruled Roger Smith’s conviction of attempted murder. While a new trial was about to be set, Smith was housed in Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center, where he promtly strangled another inmate to death (Smith later bragged that he raped the corpse, but is almost certainly a lie.). After a prolonges legal battle, wherein Roger Dale Smith proved himself to be a first class jailhouse lawyer, he in August 1970 was finally convicted of attempted manslaughter in the Chino case, and in December sentenced to death in the Glen Helen case.

It seems to have been on Death Row in San Quentin that Smith aquired his famous nickname “Pincushion”. It was also on Death Row that he befriended cult leader and convicted mass murderer Charles Manson, an outcast like himself. When California in 1972 abolished the death penalty Charles Manson was sent to Folsom, while Pincushion Smith stayed locked up in San Quentin. Both were held in the adjustment centers for their own protection. In August 1974 Pincushion was found in his cell again stabbed almost to death. He died of cancer in 2004 while housed with Manson in Cocoran’s protective unit.

The Mexican Pinchusion Frank Prado Padilla was sent to prison in 1962 after his third conviction of auto theft. A year later he escaped from San Quentin’s honor farm, got caught and sent to San Quentin proper. Here he and two other Mexicans were stabbed in February 1964 in what seems to have been a coordinated attack. Padilla was stabbed in the chest. In April 1970 he was stabbed in the back, chest and side in yet another fight in San Quentin between Mexicans. According to staff the fight was the result of “bad feelings between Chicano factions”..

In March 1972 now 36 year old Padilla was tier tender in San Quentin’s B Block, a security section that housed the more violent inmates. While serving food Padilla got into a fight with some other inmates that left him with serious knife wounds in his back. Three suspects were picked up. If we are to believe “Tijuana Jailer” New York Crane of the Aryan Brotherhood and Gabby Baeza of the Mexican Mafia were two of them.

In January 1973 Frank Padilla, now described as a “San Quentin veteran”, was again stabbed in a prison fight. This time in the yard and one suspect was picked up, together with two knives. Padilla was wounded in the arm and shoulder, but not seriously.

Sometime after his fourth stabbing in San Quentin Frank Padilla was paroled. But later he went back to prison for robbery and parole violation. In October 1978 Frank Padilla, now 42, was stabbed to death in Dueul Vocational Institute by the Nuestra Familia. The killing had had high priority for the gang because they believed that Padilla had helped the staff identify NF members so that they could be removed from the yard.

According to a former member of the Nuestra Familia Frank Padilla was known as “Kiko”, and like “Tijuana Jailer” he also mentions that Padilla was from El Paso in Texas. Whether Padilla in fact also was known as the Mexican Pincushion is not known for sure, just like the motives for his many stabbings are unknown, apart from the one that took his life. He may have belonged to that clique of Mexican inmates from El Paso that later evolved into the Texas Syndicate, at various points in time enemy of both the Mexican Mafia and the Nuestra Famlia. Or maybe Frank Prado Padilla was just an inmate so obnoxius that other inmates stabbed him out of pure personal hatred, like in the case of the other prison pincushion, Roger Dale Smith.

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The Ebb And Flow of The Early Angels

As previously said, the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC) was started around 1950 in California’s San Bernardino County, and its second chapter was founded in 1954 when the Market Street Commandos in San Francisco donned the deathhead.

According to Bo Bushnell of Outlaw Archive, Rex Cardenas was a charter (founding) member of HA Frisco. In 1956 Cardenas moved south to San Diego and founded HA Dago. He met Vic Bettencourt and gave him a charter that in the same year became HA So.Cal., located in Gardena.

Below: According to HAMC the Dago chapter was founded in 1966. This picture documents that there was a Dago chapter before 1962, the year Vic Bettencourt was killed in a traffic accident.

By 1956 the Hells Angels were also in the state capital Sacramento. HA Sacto was founded by James “Big Joe” Sadilek, brother of Frank Sadilek and charter member of HA Frisco.

Below: Big Joe airing the Sacto patch, flanked by brother Frank, president of HA Frisco, and sister-in-law Linda, treasurer of her husband’s club.

Sonny Barger claims in his 2000-memoirs that HA Sacto had folded by 1957. However, James Sadilek has in an interview with Outlaw Archive indicated that the chapter was still running early 1958. It probably folded later that year because some Sacto-members joined Hell Bent For Glory, a local club formed in 1959 by the brothers James and Patrick Miles.

Below: Members of the Hell bent For Glory, possibly the Miles-brothers.

In 1957 Vic Bettencourt gave a charter to Sonny Barger’s bogus (unauthorized) club Hells Angels Nomads, which became part of HAMC as HA Oakland. By that time HA SGV (San Gabriel Valley) and HA Fresno were already up and running.

Vic Bettencourt seems also to have been the driving force behind a string of new chapters in 1960, all in the Los Angeles area: Oc. Side (Oceanside), San Pedro, Valley (San Fernando Valley) and Venice. Around the same year HA Vallejo was added up north to Frisco and Oakland.

In 1961 Frank Sadilek gave a charter to the bogus club Hells Angels Auckland in New Zealand. By that year there were at least 13 chapters of the HAMC:

Auckland
Berdoo (San Bernardino)
Dago (San Diego)
Fresno
Frisco (San Francisco)
Oakland
Oc. Side (Oceanside)
San Pedro
SGV (San Gabriel Valley)
So.Cal. (Gardena)
Valley (San Fernando Valley)
Vallejo
Venice

Except for Auckland all chapters were in California, and most of them were wearing the Bumblebee Patch. Hangmen MC was another club with chapters in both Southern and Northern California. They lost one up north in 1962 to the Hells Angels when their Richmond chapter – led by Charles Labat – donned the deathhead.

Below: Charles Labat as a hangman. In HAMC he became known as Richmond Charlie or Charger Charlie.

Below: Freshly minted Richmond angels.

HA Richmond seems to have been the first chapter outside of Oakland to use the Barger Larger. Around the same time – 1962 – HA Martinez was also founded with the Oakland patch.

Below: Robert “Jug” Nicholson, president of HA Martinez, was killed in a gun fight January 1965. The chapter folded quickly thereafter.

Around 1963 the Oceanside, San Pedro, San Gabriel Valley, San Fernando Valley, Vallejo and
Venice chapters had all folded. In either 1962 or 1964 (we’ll return to that in later post) Hell Bent For Glory in Sacramento donned the Berdoo patch and became HA N. Sacto (North Sacramento, twin city of the state capital).

Below: To the right James “Mother” Miles as president of Hells Angels N. Sacto.

So.Cal. was hard hit by the death of Vic Bettencourt in 1962 and was by early 1965 a faltering chapter. Rex Cardenas and his Dago chapter had isolated themselves from the deathhead fraternity. In May 1965 N. Sacto folded, only to be reborn as HA Nomads with the Oakland patch on their backs.

Below: Mother Miles as president of HA Nomads with a “sheep” – club property – under his heavy arm. With cowboy hat Skip Bugening of HA Richmond.

Around the time of the famous 1965 Fourth of July Run to Bass Lake, HA Fresno also seems to have folded. Instead two new, short lived chapters with the Oakland patch were added. Led by Edward “Dirty Ed” Wiley the Quenstion Marks in Hayward had become HA Hayward and in the far north Big Bob got a charter for HA North Cal.

Below: Chapter presidents Dirty Ed and Mother Miles en route to Bass Lake, July 1965.

Below: The tall figure of Big Bob, president of HA North Cal.

When the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club became world famous in 1966 and started to expand into other US states, there were actually only six chapters left in California. Berdoo, Frisco, Oakland, Richmond, Nomads and the re-chartered Dago, all united over a new bottom rocker, “California”.

Below: In October 1966 members of HA Frisco with the new bottom rocker acted as stewards for the now world famous clothing brand The North Face when the company opened its very first shop.

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Curtis Price or Robert Exley?

As previously stated a reader has convinced me that on the picture below I wrongly identified the man seated left, back row, as Barry Mills:

(Read Identities: David Allen Chance).

Now another reader claims that I also have wrongly identified the man on the right as Curtis Price. The reader is in good faith because he has his information from the American filmmaker Robert Exley Jr., who in a vidoe claims (at 7.50) that the man is his father Robert Exley, a former member or associate of the Nazi Lowriders.

Three years ago I actually wrote to Robert Exley on Youtube that he was wrong:

As of this date Robert Dexly Jr. hasn’t reacted to my comment.

Below is a picture of Curtis Price in his prime:

And another one (back row, second from left):

And below we have a picture of Robert Exley senior (to the right) in his prime:

There’s simply no question that the man behind Michael Thompson is not Robert Exley, but Curtis Price:

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