The Initiation | FULL EPISODE | The FBI Files

[Music] in 1988 motorcycle gang violence comes to a small ohio town a shocking murder with no warning when police realize a biker gang might be involved they ask fbi organized crime experts for help the gang appears impenetrable but investigators are determined to get inside and find the killers [Applause] [Music] when gangs go to war they don't care who gets in the way in 1988 an innocent man was gunned down near cleveland ohio a victim of a deadly initiation i'm jim calstrom former head of the fbi's new york office the fbi needed to infiltrate the gang's secretive and violent world they hope groundbreaking forensic science would help them put the killers away [Music] to most riders motorcycles represent freedom adventure and fun [Music] but some bikers come together to form dangerous gangs as the ranks of these gangs grew in the 1980s the violent crime attributed to them increased like the mafia their often criminal enterprise drew the attention of fbi organized crime squads according to cleveland fbi special agent stuart schoff the motorcycle gang problem throughout the united states was fairly large at that time we had a large chapter of motorcycle gang members here in cleveland the principal biker gang in cleveland made their money off drug dealing theft of interstate shipments and extortion [Music] like mob families they protected their interests and their secrets with violence whenever multiple gangs developed in an area tensions between them inevitably grew across the country battles for control of territory were intense when one gang struck against another retributions always followed an escalating cycle of wild aggression in an incident that reflected how far the gangs would go one biker gang blew up the clubhouse of a rival gang with a rocket launcher [Music] these gangs would do anything to continue their criminal enterprise organized crime squads needed to stop them trying to develop information on the major gang in cleveland agents tried surveillance but it wasn't easy this group knew that they were being watched by us and local law enforcement when they had a meeting at their clubhouse they would post a guard out in front of the chapter clubhouse and watch for any suspicious cars in the neighborhood the gang protected the people on their street from outside crime so grateful neighbors would not talk to investigators either the cleveland gang might have guarded those in their own neighborhood but not everyone enjoyed such safety around 10 o'clock on the evening of february 27 1988 outside cleveland and perkins township 28 year old store clerk david hartlock and a co-worker had closed the music store where they worked hartlob was headed to a nearby bank to deposit the store's cash receipts [Music] he didn't know he had company inside his van or that he was being tailed for security his co-worker always followed him to the bank which was less than a mile away neither man noticed the dark sedan on hartlop's tail by the time they got to the bank his co-worker had fallen 20 seconds behind it took less than that to strike [Music] when the co-worker pulled up he saw the van taking off he spotted his friend down but a man with a gun ordered him to leave several other customers came to use the atm and were ordered at gunpoint to stay in their cars then the gunman ran off leaving david hartlob lying on the asphalt [Music] in 1988 perkins township was a small town with only 11 police officers on the [Music] force within minutes nearly all of the perkins township officers were on the scene including current police chief tim mcclung the crime scene overall was very chaotic when i arrived the paramedics were first approaching the victim he was on the ground he was struggling to try and ride himself obviously seriously injured heartlove was in shock but alive the number of entrance and exit wounds and the enormous blood loss struck the paramedics [Music] none of them had worked this degree of gunshot trauma before the best they could do in the field was keep him breathing and stem the blood flow [Music] david hartlop made it to the hospital but died 20 minutes later police interviewed hartlob's co-worker and the other shocked witnesses originally the information coming from the witnesses was very confusing obviously had different officers talking to different witnesses the different witnesses saw different things from their perspective the stories were conflicting and it was problematic at first investigators concluded there were three suspects one in the van one driving the dark sedan and one who threatened the witnesses the co-worker described him as an asian or hispanic male a witness saw the victim fall out of the van under the roadway and the van drove off now based upon that information we took a dog out in the field attempted to do an area search other officers inventoried and collected the physical evidence of the bank a set of keys determined to be for heart lob's music store would be checked for fingerprints and they would send ejected shell casings to the ballistics lab mcclung's tracking dog followed a scent from the bank toward a hotel it led about a quarter of a mile around the hotel and back into another parking area where i discovered the van as we approached the van i had my weapon drawn the dog barked its signal for clear but mcclung and the backup officer had to be sure there was no one inside the officers knew not to disrupt any evidence that might be in the van and waited for crime scene technicians to arrive we weren't sure if the suspect could still be in the air i mean he could have been in a tree line watching us for for all we knew the technicians began processing the second crime scene to determine what had happened there were rounds that penetrated through the back of the driver's seat through the victim and out through the door of the vehicle it went along with the theory that he was ambushed inside the vehicle that the shooter was behind technicians noted a great deal of blood spatter mostly on and around the front seat they collected samples of the blood from each pool for examination at the serology lab between the seats they found a mac-11 semi-automatic handgun the type of weapon we recovered led us to believe that this was not a couple of guys got together and decided to go rob somebody making a night deposit i mean this is not a weapon that you typically encounter on a small midwestern town someone had ground off the serial number and attached a plastic bag to catch ejected shells police found it odd that such an evidence-conscious killer would leave the gun behind perhaps he panicked or was injured the mac 11 had also been modified with a homemade silencer it led us to believe that the people involved were quite possibly for lack of a better term professional but they weren't experts the silencer was not aligned properly and caused each bullet to split in two sending shrapnel flying throughout the van we knew that he was making a bank deposit so we were feeling that this was along the lines of a robbery yet inside the van they recovered the music store's deposit bag once the money bag was found inside the vehicle with over four thousand dollars inside that theory quickly was cast to the side the crime scene technicians retrieved multiple bullet fragments and several complete slugs from the van they determined 13 rounds had been fired all from behind a brutal execution somebody wanted him dead there was a lot of motivation that maybe this was a contract killing could have been a murder for hire but somebody definitely wanted him dead and another canine handler had their dog search for the suspect's trail leading away from the van but neither dog could key on any scent as a canine handler it was my job to interpret what the dog was trying to tell us and i i believe that the dog was telling us that the suspects left in a car as some officers wrapped up the crime scene the others fanned out across the township looking for three men in a dark sedan it had been perkins first murder in more than 10 years and police wanted to find the killers fast early the next morning in the adjacent town of sandusky two officers returned to the sandusky police station in the middle of what they thought was a routine shift when their supervisor briefed them on the murder in perkins the mundane suddenly became remarkable they realized they might have seen the shooting suspects the previous night hours earlier the two officers had pulled over a dark sedan for making an illegal right turn on red they had identified the driver as mark verde [Music] the front passenger steven yeah both men lived in cleveland suburbs the officers noticed he wore a belt buckle with the cleveland biker gang's insignia and a hunting knife though that was not illegal [Music] the third man was in the back seat but at the time they had no reason to check his id [Music] the officers in ye and verdi's information everything was in order since they were unaware of the shooting they let the three men go the traffic stop had been at 9 56 pm about five minutes after the murder and three miles away from the crime scene the officers said the front passenger steven yee and the car closely matched the descriptions given by witnesses at the bank sandusky police immediately alerted their colleagues in perkins frustrated that the killers might have gotten away because of a technology glitch at the time the perkins police department and the sandusky police department which have a bordering jurisdiction we're operating on two separate police frequencies the officer had no idea that we had just had a shooting the belt buckle was an important clue police knew anyone wearing the gang's insignia was almost certainly a member the non-member caught wearing the insignia risked violent punishment or death investigators now had suspect names but if the secretive gang was involved solving the crime might be impossible investigating biker gangs is a unique investigation they are very closed mouth they actually one of the gangs has a saying that three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead [Music] after david hartlob was gunned down in perkins township ohio police developed two suspects whom they believed were connected to a cleveland biker gang aware that federal authorities were investigating this very gang as a suspected organized crime ring local officers called special agent charles holloway at the fbi sandusky resident agency yes the perkins police department contacted the fbi to see if we were in a position to provide them with any intelligence information on the two individuals who had been identified at the time of the traffic stop holloway knew the best source of information was special agent stuart schoff in cleveland who headed the fbi's criminal biker investigation in the area [Music] chauff had been trying to build a file on the cleveland chapter of the gang oh it's very difficult to investigate a group like that we worked a long time trying to get more information about them develop intelligence information and and put together a case on them that would put these individuals away for a long time they've been unable to plant moles inside the secretive gang [Music] but undercover agents had gotten close enough to learn details about its structure prospective members called prospects wore banners on their jackets listing the city the gang ran in full members wore jackets with complete patches they called their colors the initiation for prospects to earn their colors had its price the initiation has to do with some type of violent act towards a either a rival motorcycle gang member or an individual that has maybe wronged one of the members the requirement of violence was designed in part to weed out undercover law enforcement trying to infiltrate since no law officer could commit such a crime through their ongoing investigation fbi agents were able to identify many of those involved with a gang including the two men id'd in the traffic stop in sandusky on the night of the heartlav murder special agent schoff knew the passenger stephen yee was a full-fledged gang member and the driver mark verdi was a prospect [Music] the third man was a mystery but agents were confident he was linked to the cleveland gang too investigators knew about a rival gang that had a clubhouse in sandusky the rivalry between the two gangs had been escalating and had recently moved up a notch [Music] agents had heard of an incident in a bar a few months earlier the rival gangs found themselves in the same place and each wanted control of the territory bikers consider their colors sacred a member of the rival gang made off with a prize trophy the jacket of one of the cleveland bikers [Music] it was a profound insult [Music] and no one would back down what color was on that chair about two minutes ago man we had cuddles right here on the chair where's your buddy sitting here hey man come on [Music] in the broad one of the cleveland bikers was shot agents had developed a confidential informant associated with the gang he told them that after the fight he was at a party where the cleveland gang talked about the incident they were looking to retaliate and the prospective members saw a perfect opportunity for their initiation as part of the revenge [Music] investigators who had begun outlining the two gangs realized that a member of the rival group drove a van exactly like david hartlob's they might have gone after that gang member and made a mistake according to perkins police chief tim mcclung the victim in the case mr hartlob had no criminal record and there was nothing in his background to suggest that he would have been a victim of a murder for hire and the similarities between the vehicles led investigators to believe that it was a it was a case of mistaken identity that he was killed because his van matched the rival gang member's van guess what they were thinking soon after the murder the ranks of the cleveland gang grew according to sandusky fbi special agent george steinbach we had received information from several sources that a celebration party was conducted at a in the cleveland area to celebrate uh two new members at least two new members of the uh the biker gang this will be indicative of them being taken in as full-fledged members as a result of committing a heinous crime because of the strong possibility that the gang was involved assistant u.s attorney jim wooley and the cleveland area organized crime strike force came on board there were things that needed to be done from the lawyering end including going to judges and seeking search warrants so as soon as it became apparent that we were looking at possibly a hit by a biker gang the organized crime strike force was brought in to work with the fbi and the police departments to help coordinate the investigation the strike force had a theory as to motive and the names of two of the three suspects stephen yee and mark verde they needed to identify the third and find the evidence to put the killers away [Music] in ohio the fbi believed a cleveland biker gang was behind a brutal mistaken identity assassination they identified two suspects as stephen yee and mark verde the fbi kept them under loose surveillance while they continued the investigation special agent charles holloway was trying to identify the third suspect and looked to gang expert stuart show for help special agent chof provided us with background information on yi and verdi and he came up with three names of either members or prospects of this motorcycle gang who he felt were most likely to have been the third person in the vehicle investigators needed to interview those three men the two bikers they found first had solid alibis for the night of the murder non-gang members corroborated their stories and the two men were eliminated as suspects thank you very much the one on the list they could not find was john ray bonds he matched the description of the man in the back seat during the traffic stop [Music] the fbi agents in cleveland interviewed various members of his family and what they were told by family members was that john had gone on a two-week vacation it was pointed out at that time to us by his grandfather that john also now had his arm in a sling and that john had told his grandfather and his mother that he had injured his arm at work none of the family knew exactly where bonds was vacationing while the cleveland fbi continued the search for bonds the nearby east lake police department turned up important information about suspect mark verde the driver during the traffic stop detective bob jackson developed the lead a fraud investigator from a local bank contacted us telling us that well i have this fraud case involving mark verde where he had taken out a loan for several thousand dollars landed up using a ten thousand dollar collateral to you know to get the loan and then line up stealing the remainder of the money from a good friend of his like most other investigators in the area jackson was familiar with the heart lob murder he knew that verdi was a suspect and that the fbi needed more evidence on him so we're thinking whoa you know we really might have something here we we have a fraud case a theft case that we can investigate that we could put together and just maybe maybe we'll luck out and maybe we'll be able to help out these other agencies with this murder case they would not risk any procedural errors according to assistant u.s attorney jim wooley when you don't have the defendants or the criminals caught on videotape and people don't confess right away and you're trying to get evidence you have to get evidence legally you've got to use search warrants you've got to use subpoenas you've got to get evidence in a way that's legal so you can later use it in court the superior court judge signed a warrant that allowed east lake police to search verdi's home for evidence in the fraud case fbi agents accompanied them legally they could only observe we went there to look for bank documents and if we saw anything else that we thought might be evidence or have anything to do with this case out in perkins township we would let the fbi know that we saw something that might be pretty interesting mrs bertie detective jackson please detect the virus we have a search warrant for your premises the suspect was not at home but his wife was fully cooperative when they explained the warrant and her rights she let them in but it was mark verde's name that was on the warrant so they decided to wait they didn't want to do anything that might jeopardize using evidence in a later trial after half an hour mark verde came home mark hey mark mark mark birdie yes hey mark how are you doing okay good letter man mark we got a search warrant for your residence we got some federal agents here we got detectives from east lake unfazed by the police presence take a look at it remember that theft case remember take a look at remember several years ago you took out that loan from the bank for about seven thousand dollars you had a buddy of yours gave me 10 grand as collateral you end up cashing it fortune the other guy's name you remember that he learned of the fraud case against him and that with the warrant they could search his entire house [Music] [Music] upstairs the search quickly paid off when officers found papers relating to the alleged bank fraud but more importantly they also discovered several items that might help the fbi with the heart lob murder we found a briefcase and you know you open up the briefcase and there's a mask in there there's gloves and the grinder was in there and shavings metal shavings the grinder in shavings might be related to the serial number ground off the murder weapon recovered from the van we're searching we see a map and it's folded up unusually and we look at it and you open it up you look at it and you see sandusky perkins township area kind of highlighted and pointed out the murder had taken place in perkins township and verdi was pulled over in neighboring sandusky it was time for special agent stuart schoeff and the other agents to take on a role beyond that of observers we decided to get a federal search warrant and we did that waiting some time at the residence while several agents went back to the office and drafted the affidavit and search warrant with the federal warrant outlining evidence saw in connection with the murder agents could conduct an additional search of the verde home and seize any related items it did not take long to find more incriminating evidence including a mac mac-11 semi-automatic handgun the same model as the murder weapon its serial number was ground off in the same manner as the killer's gun and we also found a pistol in the wood bin we found trash bags similar to the trash bag material that was used to make a makeshift cartridge catcher on the mac 11 which was used for the homicide with probable cause increasing agents secured a third warrant to search the vehicle mark verde drove on the night of the murder at the cleveland federal building's garage fbi technicians processed suspect stephen yee's car though two weeks had passed since the murder the car did contain evidence for special agent holloway during the processing we located two shell casings nine millimeter shell casings in the vehicle the nine millimeter specification was the right caliber for use in a mac-11 agent sent the shells to the fbi's ballistics lab for comparison against the murder weapon [Music] the technicians also recovered hair samples from the back seat of the car [Music] and we found spatters of what was determined to be human blood on the rear of the passenger seat liquefying the blood with distilled water the technicians collected samples agents wondered if the blood got there on the night of the shooting testing would show it was not the same blood type as the victims perhaps it was the killers investigators recalled that the bullets had been split by the faulty silencer possibly injuring the shooter [Music] neither stephen yee nor mark verdi seemed to have a fresh gunshot wound but the family of the third suspect john bonds reported he had had his arm in a sling the day after the murder allegedly due to a work injury now you are familiar with uh john ray to check the story the fbi interviewed bond's employer 27 when asked about the days surrounding the murder he advised us that john was scheduled to be at work on the night of february 27th the night of the homicide and had failed to appear for work as scheduled and had not been back since there was no record of bonds suffering any injury at work the pieces were falling into place but they still had no direct proof we obtained a search warrant for hair sample blood sample and for john to be examined by a physician for signs of him having sustained some type of a gunshot wound they had the warrant now they needed to find the suspect just like any other fugitive search you would interview family friends continuously checking back with the employer spot check his residence other places that he's known to hang out such as a clubhouse friends bars where he's known to you know hang out and all that was done in an effort to locate john bonds unsuccessfully in 1988 ohio authorities sought john ray bonds who had left the area after a murder in perkins township after weeks of searching for bonds special agent charles holloway got an important call on march 14 1988 john's attorney contacted the cleveland office of the fbi and said that john knew that the fbi was attempting to locate him and that he would present himself at the fbi office in cleveland on march the 16th of 1988 which he did agents serve bonds with a warrant requiring him to give a blood sample the doctor concluded a fresh tattoo on his arm covered a recent injury bonds did not know the fbi was developing innovative dna profiling technology that might conclusively match a suspect's blood to samples from a crime scene agents hope that if they did find a match the courts would accept the new science as evidence we had a very good circumstantial case against him based on all of the interviews that we had done but we did not have fingerprints from john bonds with only circumstantial evidence prosecutors did not want arrests yet so bonds was released [Music] then on march 22 an ohio department of transportation cleanup crew working the highway outside sandusky discovered the vehicle title for david hartlob's van nearby they found a handgun a wool hat and a glove and a box of nine millimeter ammunition the caliber used in mach 11s aware of the heartlave murder they called authorities the placement of the items further implicated the cleveland gang for prosecutor jim wooley happens to be a state highway that would connect sandusky ohio to cleveland ohio it would be a route that someone would travel if they were driving from sandusky on the way back to cleveland the suspects might have thrown the items out the window as they drove away from the crime fbi technicians collected the evidence for analysis examiners at the fbi's hairs and fibers lab compared the evidence from the highway to evidence they already had fibers consistent with that glove had been located on the murder weapon fibers consistent with that glove had been located on a shirt which was removed from mark verde's house during the march 9th search warrant and fibers were found on the glove consistent with the carpet in david hartlob's van additionally a hair found on the glove matched a hair recovered from the back seat of the car the suspects were in on the night of the murder at the firearms and toolmarks unit fbi examiners worked on the murder weapon trying to find a trail to its owner the murderers had gone to great lengths to try to make this gun not traceable they thought and they ground down the serial number such that you couldn't see it but through a chemical restoration process the fbi was able to raise up the serial number and identify the serial number even though you couldn't see it with a naked eye and then you could trace that gun checking the records of the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms investigators found the murder weapons registered owner he confirmed that he used to own that mach 11 and the one found at verdi's house but several months earlier both guns had been stolen from his car which he parked outside a friend's house [Music] that friend's name was steven yee here we have steve yee is stopped in a traffic stop minutes after the homicide in sandusky ohio and we can show that the murder weapon was stolen from a vehicle parked in front of his residence several months before the homicide the circumstantial evidence against ye verdi and bonds was building but agents wanted something more definite before they made arrests in april 1987 they learned of a breakthrough regarding the blood evidence in the case fbi serology experts had determined that the blood and david hartlob's van had actually come from two individuals presumably the victim and an assailant examiners compared the blood from the victim's van to that from the suspect's car [Music] the lab came back and told us that the blood which had been recovered in stevie's vehicle matched the blood that had been recovered in hart lob's vehicle the match was at the blood type level only still it meant that the man in the back seat at the traffic stop was likely the killer in the van they hope the revolutionary dna technology being developed would reveal a more exact molecular match had read an article in one of the fbi publications that the fbi was is putting together its dna unit and they were in the process of doing research so inasmuch as we had blood in our case which we felt could possibly be compared with a suspect i contacted the section chief that was in charge of putting that unit together and spoke to him about the possibility of doing a dna analysis in this case at the fbi lab in 1988 examiners like senior scientist dr bruce bedoli were still testing the groundbreaking forensic science of dna profiling dna is the blueprint for for what you are what i am for what all living things are so if we could tap into that blueprint we could tap into information that help us identify individuals examiners were working to establish a scientifically sound way to profile the dna from a known source like a suspect's blood and compare it to the dna from an unknown source like the blood left at a crime scene and we generate a profile of looks something like a bar code that then we compare that barcode to another barcode and the barcodes are in the same kind of pattern they may have come from the same source by early 1989 after years of testing quality control the examiners believe they were ready to use the science in the federal courts the heart lob case would be the first one [Music] examiners profiled the dna sequence from the blood in the van and from the blood of john bonds comparing the markers of the two sequences they made a match exactly the evidence assistant u.s attorney jim wooley needed the dna was a critical piece of the puzzle because it provided virtually conclusive evidence that john ray bonds a member of the biker gang the third man in the back seat of the car with stevie and mark verde stopped five minutes from the homicide had bled inside the van march 7 1989 more than a year after the murder it was time to bring in the killers [Music] in the hours before dawn swat teams prepared for a simultaneous takedown of the three suspects [Music] they knew it was safest to catch them while they were still asleep [Music] the teams fanned out to the homes of ye verdi and bonds they hoped to strike before the suspects could warn one another or flee one team moved on verdi's house while another entered yeast his fellow gang member steven yee was taken into custody as well but the third suspect john ray bonds was not at home [Music] nor was he with known family members the man investigators believed was a ruthless assassin was again on the run in the summer of 1989 authorities on the trail of fugitive john ray barnes had him profiled on a nationally televised crime show on the program they described bonds his distinctive tattoos and the places he frequented hoping someone somewhere would recognize the suspected murderer on the afternoon of november 8 1989 a patron at a bar in paducah kentucky spotted bonds he remembered the tattoos on the fugitive's hands from the tv show and took a chance he contacted the local sheriff who called the fbi resident agency in paducah they were ready to arrest bonds but they had to be careful according to special agent stuart schoff they felt that going into the bar would there may be some trouble if they entered the bar at that point because there were a lot of biker types in the bar and they did not want to have any type of confrontation they felt it would be much safer to set up some type of roadblock the fbi kentucky state police and local officers staged a fake traffic accident on a road leading from the bar to a known biker clubhouse in the area when bonds and another gang member left the bar agents followed [Music] as they hoped the pair headed toward the clubhouse and got on the blocked road [Music] and undercover police pulled in behind them [Music] though he didn't know it bonds was [Music] surrounded nearly two years after the murder of david hartlob john ray bonds was finally in custody now he and the other two suspects stephen yee and mark verde would stand trial for the killing [Music] fbi senior scientist dr bruce bedoli had to help convince federal judges that the dna evidence should be allowed in the trial new technologies as they enter the court will be challenged for their admissibility so i had a role in going in to defend the technology to demonstrate that it met the scientific standards to be admitted into court so that the jury could hear about the evidence in the first place after months of hearings assistant u.s attorney jim wooley succeeded in getting the dna evidence ruled admissible with it and the other evidence he went into the trial confident this is a case where just piece after piece after piece of evidence was built through forensic testing ballistic testing serology forensic chemistry hair and fiber analysis dna analysis serial number restoration and you start just building those things one on top of the other and there's really very little that a defense attorney can say when faced with a case like that stephen yee mark verdi and john bonds were all convicted of murder and sentenced to life the unrelenting investigation put three killers behind bars and helped open the door for a forensic technology that has changed criminal investigations [Music] forever you

Channel: The FBI Files

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Keywords: FBI, FBI Files, FBI Documentary, Documentary, Crime, Crime Documentary, Crime Patrol, True Crime, True crime daily, Unsolved, Crime Stories, Crime Documentaries Full Episodes, Full Episode, unsolved true crime, fbi files full episodes, we got him, mystery, solved, investigation, police, criminal, prison, jail, the initiation, biker gang, three man murder

Id: 7JskNwJrYgE

Length: 49min 23sec (2963 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 27 2021