"He tends to exaggerate"

February 13, 2013 10:08 PM

Thor Holm Hansen, (the Outlaw biker chief, Haitian insurgency catalyst, country singer, CIA patsy, inventor and porn star promoter who married a coffee heiress,) is disheveled and cantankerous inside his orange prison tunic, and really wants you to know there hadn't been much cocaine. Grenades and women, yes. A briefcase stuffed with $54,000: definitely that. But under no circumstances had there been more than two ounces of cocaine. (Via)

July 15, 1986: Former Fugitive Pleads Innocent To Haitian Conspiracy Charges

March 14, 1998: Biker's Wild Journey Halted

November 20, 2012: Outlaws gang leader demands his day in U.S. court after 30 years

"Thor Hansen's Bizarre Bond-Jumping Trial: 'I've Never Seen Anything Like This'"

posted by zarq (6 comments total)

I can't believe this post has no comments yet. That said, I can't think of anything substantive to contribute, other than to watch in fascination ...and yet I post.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:06 AM on February 14 [1 favorite]

After the ruling, Hansen's lawyer, Joe Chambrot -- who took over the case only when Hansen became confused while testifying in his own defense -- said if Hansen had had proper defense counsel, he would have prevailed.

It rather sounds like he did not take over soon enough.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:29 AM on February 14

Indeed, leotrotsky... interesting read.
posted by ph00dz at 6:43 AM on February 14

This is really fascinating stuff and I'd like to be able to comment intelligently on it, but all I keep thinking about is how the drummer for my old band basically grew up as part of the Outlaw biker community, and we used to play out in the woods at one of their annual shin-digs at his parents' place, and now I'm thinking maybe they were actually a little more like the Sons of Anarchy than I ever realized...
posted by saulgoodman at 6:48 AM on February 14 [1 favorite]

In that last pic he looks like Bukowski.

Although his defense is the sort of logic typical to those situations. (There was a guy who was arrested a bit back for gun trafficking - bunch of Mac-10's, fully automatic, with suppressors (silencers), and by a bunch I mean a 3/4 of a cargo container, part of his defense was that he couldn't possibly have a set of machine pistols with silencers on them because he was on his way to meet his contact to get the silencers, which is why the container wasn't full. Therefore he was innocent).

The Outlaws MC stock in trade is cocaine. It's been their thing for 40 years now. It's just bizarre (although again typical) to argue you had explosives but not coke.

It's funny, a lot of people like outlaw bikers. Most of the guys I've met in Chicago who were Outlaws, nice, friendly, psychotically obsessed with club drama and self-obsessed sure, but otherwise interesting and on the whole charismatic. Darkly so.

I used to do runs and coming back always wind up at the Exit, a bar out here in Chicago, lots of Outlaws there. (Most of the guys I run with aren't joiners in the first place. It's the same sort of thing with any club, legal or illegal - they're arguing about talking about organizing about talking about how to talk about talking riding and who's a *real* rider, who they want to ride with, who should go, who should stay, blah blah blah instead of just riding.)

So one of the guys talks to an Outlaw for a while, comes back "He's a nice guy. Has a few kids. Trying to keep his oldest daughter from partying and doing drugs."
I told him that he wasn't a nice guy. That if I could get away with it, I'd break his spine right now.
"What do you mean? He's a criminal sure, but he's an ex-con got no other way to provide for his kids."
Well, if that were true he wouldn't have raped a girl last week. If that were true he wouldn't be running a crew that turns women out. If it were about money he'd be laundering money or extorting punks or even being muscle and beating or killing the competition. He wouldn't spend so much time getting off on it.

It's easy to get caught up in the drama of some of these guys' lives. And indeed, some guys are nice - relative to what they're involved in.
But Thor is sort of textbook. Anything nice, any caring they show, typically self-deception and they create havoc and destruction, often self-destruction, wherever they go.

And it's not even the actual criminal stuff. It's this circus of the self. The continual epic soap opera.
posted by Smedleyman at 8:47 AM on February 14 [4 favorites]

That is the best lede I've read in months.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 8:00 PM on February 15