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Cops in the Texas city shot motorcyclists, arrested all the witnesses, and have since prohibited them from speaking out under penalty of contempt. Four months after a shootout left 9 bikers dead at the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas, prompting the arrest of 177 people, many of them presumably innocent, authorities are still denying the public access to key pieces of evidence, including video. The legal fate of arrestees still hangs in the balance. And it still isn’t known how many of the dead bikers were killed by bullets that police officers fired. But police bullets did hit some...

A member of the Desgraciados Motorcycle Club named George Bergman appeared at an examining trial last Friday in Waco. Bergman had just arrived at the Twin Peaks restaurant last May 17 and was walking to the Don Carlos restaurant on the other side of the parking lot to use the bathroom there when he heard a gun shot. He was detained, found to be in possession of two, small, legal knives incarcerated for hours and finally arrested. He spent 20 days in jail before being released on $80,000 bail. He lost his job and continues to suffer from injuries suffered...

The Associated Press has analyzed evidence from a May shootout in which nine members of motorcycle clubs were killed outside a Waco restaurant and concluded some were hit by police bullets, a Friday AP report reveals. “The AP reviewed more than 8,800 pages of evidence, including police reports, dash-cam video, photos and audio interviews related to the May 17 confrontation,” the report explains. “Four months later, authorities have released little information about what sparked the fight or how the gunfire played out, and no one has been charged with any of the deaths.” . . . That goes directly to...

A visiting judge ruled Friday that Waco police had sufficient probable cause after the May 17 Twin Peaks shootout to arrest a Balch Springs biker who is associated with a Bandidos support group. After a two-hour examining trial, Judge James Morgan said there is enough evidence against Burton George Bergman for prosecutors to present his case to a grand jury for consideration of indictment. Bergman, 48, a truck driver who is free on bail, claimed he was arrested and jailed improperly because there was not sufficient probable cause to allege he committed the crime of engaging in organized criminal activity....

A police detective’s refusal to turn over the name of a confidential informant to prosecutors has cast a public spotlight on a private rift between the Waco Police Department and the McLennan County District Attorney’s office. Police Chief Brent Stroman, Assistant Chief Frank Gentsch and Sgt. Phillip Zboril brought Waco City Attorney Jennifer Richie, who hired Waco attorney Rick Bostwick to represent the department. Waco’s 19th State District Judge Ralph Strother then ordered police to disclose the informant’s identity to prosecutors and himself so he could determine if it should be revealed to the defense. But Strother said as he...

The leaked video from the Don Carlos parking lot capturing a small piece of the conflict in Waco may not show us exactly what transpired on May 17th, but it very well may reveal the key witness and what triggered the shooting. The man in the blue shirt must be identified. The leaked video shows a man in a blue shirt surveying the Twin Peaks parking lot and the bikers gathered there. He does not look like a patron waiting for a table or taking a break from a meal. This man is completely absorbed in observing the gathering and...

WACO (September 14, 2015) A Dallas lawyer who is representing a Hewitt man in connection with the Twin Peaks biker gang shootings has filed a brief with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals seeking the nullification of a gag order in the case. F. Clinton Broden, who represents Matthew Alan Clendennen, a Hewitt businessman who was arrested on the day of the shootings that left nine dead and 20 injured, is asking the court to reverse its decision to stay the issue and order the gag rule lifted. Broden cites several issues in his brief, including that the 54th District...

Texas Officials Under Scrutiny for Biker Shootout Case The secrecy that enshrouds the investigation into a biker shootout in May that left nine people dead and led to the mass-arrest of 177 people is hardly surprising in this city, where public scrutiny is rare and unwelcome. On the banks of the Brazos River in Central Texas, Waco and the surrounding county are largely run by a close-knit circle of judges, prosecutors and law enforcement that defense lawyers complain leads local agencies to close ranks in the aftermath of this most recent calamity.

“A McLennan County investigator has obtained a search warrant to extract a bullet from the arm of a biker — killed last week in a wreck — who was wounded in the deadly May 17 Twin Peaks shootout but left Waco before he was identified or arrested,” the Waco Tribune-Herald reported Wednesday. He’s doing it because it may help identify the weapon used to create the wound, and wants to have the sample submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is conducting the forensic analysis of weapons, bullets, bullet fragments and casings recovered at the...

I’ve reported at length before about various reasons to question the official government narrative surrounding the chaotic and violent incident that resulted in nine people shot to death and 18 wounded and 177 arrested outside the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas, on May 17. It all happened outside a planned meeting of a mostly political biker club coalition, the Confederation of Clubs and Independents. See here for the most recent, and here the most thorough, of that reporting. The gag order on people involved in defending the arrested, keeping information from flowing to the public on this controversy, was...

Gun ownership is on trial in Waco, so why aren't the NRA and all the open-carry advocates going nuts over what's happening regarding prosecutions from the the Twin Peaks biker massacre? In McLennan County, visiting Judge James Morgan ruled after an examining trial that there was sufficient cause to have arrested a 65-year old concealed carry permit holder who wasn't wearing a biker cut but a Christian t-shirt (he's chaplain to the Bandidos and two veterans groups) because he was carrying legal personal weapons. The judge declared there was probable cause to support an arrest even though no police "officer...

Whatever happened to all those Waco bikers? You know, the 177 people arrested at the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas after a motorcycle rally on May 17 ended with nine people shot dead? Immediately following the shooting, I wrote about just how badly Waco authorities screwed up the arrests. Rather than trifle with technicalities like the rules for bail under the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Justice of the Peace Pete Peterson set bail at a staggering $1 million for each of the arrestees in order to “send a message.” Then I described how prosecuting nearly 200 bikers was...

The national administrator for the 2 Million Bikers to DC Facebook page issued a press release saying that the meeting on May 17th at the Twin Peaks restaurant gathered with no intent to engage in organized crime. He includes in the letter what he calls the agenda for the meeting that day. snip Cara Danette Johnston told Breitbart Texas that the “biggest lie” is that the bikers all went to a regularly-scheduled regional bikers meeting with criminal intent, and/or to discuss anything related to a “turf war.” Johnson describes herself as a biker “[w]ho loves and believes in the good...

WACO, Texas – An attorney for one of the men charged in the Twin Peaks shootings in May has filed a subpoena to get surveillance video from the Waco restaurant during the shootings, but the city has moved to quash the subpoena.

WACO (August 13, 2015) Judge Walter H. "Pete" Peterson on Thursday released final autopsy reports in connection with the nine motorcycle riders who died on May 17 in the Twin Peaks biker gang shootout. The preliminary autopsy reports released months ago confirmed all nine died of gunshot wounds and the final reports supported those conclusions but provided much more detail about those wounds and other issues discovered in the autopsies. Jesus Delgado Rodriguez, 65, died of gunshot wounds from a medium-caliber weapon that fired a copper-jacketed bullet, the final autopsy report says. One of the bullets entered the left side...

Autopsy reports on the nine bikers killed in the May 17 Twin Peaks shootout were released Thursday morning by McLennan County Justice of the Peace W.H. “Pete” Peterson’s office. The nine died as a result of one or more bullet wounds but ballistics reports are not included with the autopsy reports. The reports do not indicate who killed the men and most references to bullets refer to projectiles ranging in size from small to large. Those listed in the autopsy reports include: Manuel Issac Rodriguez, 40, Allen, one gunshot wound in the head and one in the back. Matthew Mark...

McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna has asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to overturn a ruling by Waco’s intermediate appellate court that lifted a gag order in the case of a Hewitt man arrested in the Twin Peaks shootout. Reyna filed a petition for writ of mandamus and a motion for stay of writ of mandamus with the state’s highest criminal court Tuesday. Reyna is asking the court to rule that the 10th Court of Appeals was wrong last week when it ordered 54th State District Judge Matt Johnson to vacate a gag order he imposed in the...

The hunt is on for an impartial judge to hear 20 Twin Peaks biker examining trials. The administrative judge for the Waco region has asked a Travis County judge to hear the trials. This comes after one of the judges was found to be biased by a fellow judge after a hearing on a motion to remove him. The other justice of the peace is accused of saying she is biased. The Waco Tribune-Herald has reported that the administrative judge of the Third Judicial Region, Judge Billy Ray Stubblefield, said he is waiting to hear from the Travis County judge....

Six Shooter Junction – A Big D barrister assured his client will get a chance to have the probable cause of the charges against him examined at trial prior to a Grand Jury’s scrutiny. In a favorable ruling on a motion to remove the magistrate who charged Matt Clendennen with the capital conspiracy charge of engaging in organized criminal activity that lead to murder, F. Clinton Broden furthermore assured his client that a new assignment of his case to a court of record for the purpose of an examining trial will be under the control of the Third Judicial Region...

A local justice of the peace was removed Thursday from an examining trial in the case of a Hewitt biker accused of engaging in organized crime in relation to the shootout at Twin Peaks restaurant. Joe Carroll, senior judge of the 27th Judicial District Court, granted a motion to recuse Justice of the Peace W.H. “Pete” Peterson from the case involving Matthew Clendennen after Clendennen’s attorney, Clinton Broden, filed a complaint against Peterson. Peterson set the initial $1 million bonds for the 177 bikers arrested in the aftermath of the May 17 shootout, and he was on the scene that...