Kicking and thrashing on the ground, Wayne Hicks was on the losing end of a fist fight in a field near Toledo when he took out a buck knife and jammed it into his opponent's throat.

The killing was an act of brutality that shocked even Hicks' friends - all members of a Toledo motorcycle gang who were known more for crashing parties and dealing drugs than murder.

Nearly 23 years later, Hicks has shocked his friends again.

Decades after he left Toledo and rose through the ranks of the Outlaws motorcycle club, he became a surprise witness in a federal trial in Tampa against an organization rivaling the Hell's Angels.

Breaking a code of silence, the husky, tattooed biker took the witness stand two months ago under heavy guard and recounted his gang's reign of terror - murders, bombings, beatings - over the last 20 years.

Then, he raised his finger and pointed to the man across the room who ordered the murders: Harry “Taco” Bowman, the president of the Outlaws and once on the FBI's “Ten Most Wanted” list.

Over the years, the two men rose through the ranks together, with Hicks becoming a national vice president, and Bowman, the overall leader.

Hicks talked about their murders. He talked about their cocaine deals. He talked about their battles with rival gangs that led to the deaths of more than two dozen Outlaws.

During their time in the Outlaws, more than 100 people were killed around the country in biker disputes - arguably the most violent period in American motorcycling.

“In the world of motorcycle gangs, this is like Sammy “The Bull” Gravano telling all he knows about John Gotti,” says Lt. Terry Katz, of the Maryland State police. “He's the highest ranking member to ever testify.''

For Hicks, 46, it was an inglorious end for a street-wise biker who ushered in a brief but bloody era of Toledo biker gangs and who rose to become the No. 2 man in an organization that boasts 32 chapters in North America.

Indicted on a dozen federal charges in 1996, he agreed to testify against his old friends. In return, he could receive a reduced sentence.

During his court appearance, he said he feared for his life, and was trying to be accepted into the witness protection program. “I know myself, I'm targeted as a snitch, my life would be in danger,” he said. The divorced father of five children is in custody in an undisclosed facility in Florida.

Outlaw members angrily refuse to talk about Hicks' court appearance, saying he is an opportunist who told a pack of lies to save himself.

They say prosecutors dropped charges against him for the same crimes he has accused others of committing.

Tampa defense lawyer Stephen Crawford, who has represented other Outlaws, says Hicks' testimony was “critical” to the government's case. “The most surprising thing,” said Mr. Crawford, “is that he rolled.”

In the wee hours of July 30, 1978, Wayne Edward Hicks - armed and dangerous - was on the run.

Hours earlier, the young leader of a Toledo biker club - The Mongols - and his members crashed an outdoor keg party in Springfield Township.

Hicks ran into the host of the party, Tom Polaski - whose birthday was being celebrated that night - and they began to fight, police reports state.

As two fellow bikers pulled the much larger Mr. Polaski off their overmatched leader, Hicks flashed a knife and stabbed Mr. Polaski in the neck, severing his jugular vein, reports state.

Hicks jumped on his chopper and sped away, while Mr. Polaski - who turned 26 that day - bled to death on his way to Medical College of Ohio Hospital.

The killing was the beginning of Hicks' association with the Outlaws that would endure for two decades.

With a warrant out for his arrest, he fled to Dayton, where he stayed with the Outlaws chapter there. Though not a member, he had met the Outlaws in Daytona Beach in March, 1977.

With Hicks in hiding, the “heat” shifted to his fellow bikers. “We were stopping anyone on a motorcycle, especially the gangs,” said retired Lucas County sheriff's detective R.J. Chromik.

“I swear, we wouldn't let them drive five miles without stopping them.” Twice, their clubhouse was raided, with police turning up knives and a sawed-off shotgun. Finally, with pressure mounting, Hicks returned home two months after the stabbing and surrendered to police near the clubhouse at 32 Hawley St.

“I expected to see this big, tough guy,” recalls Mr. Chromik. “We kept hearing that he wasn't going to be taken alive. And here's this punk - 140 pounds - with glasses and long hair.”

Under a plea agreement between his lawyer, Jon Richardson, and prosecutors, Hicks was charged with voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to five to 25 years in prison.

It was the first time in prison for the middle child of three siblings.

Born in Toledo on Aug. 16, 1954, he was raised with an older sister and younger brother in a tidy, middle-class neighborhood near Reynolds Corners.

Unable to graduate with his 1972 class from Rogers High School because of a lack of credits, he attended summer school to obtain his diploma.

One former neighbor, Roger Brady, remembers young Hicks as a rebellious teenager racing down Atwood Road on his chopper. “The neighbors would come out and tell him to keep the noise down, and he'd just give them the middle finger and keep going.”

Hicks admitted in court that he quit his job at Someplace Else restaurant to sell drugs, “because I could make more money.”

Two years after he graduated from high school, he married Deborah Overton on April 6, 1974, records show, but domestic troubles plagued their union.

His father, a retired electrician from Doehler-Jarvis, agonized over his son's troubles, recalled, Daniel Kazmierczak, 73, a half-brother of the elder Hicks. “He used to tell me, `I don't know what I'm going to do about that kid.'”

His father died of a heart attack at 59 while his son was in prison. Hicks' mother, 85, says she and her husband taught their son right from wrong. He had been a scout and a Sunday school pupil at Epiphany Lutheran Church, she recalls.

But things changed after he left home at 18. “I just think he fell into the wrong crowd,” she says.

With Hicks in prison, the Mongols needed new direction. They found a much larger group to swear their allegiance to: The Outlaws.

The nation's second largest biker club - which cornered the amphetamine and topless-dance markets in several cities - welcomed a foothold in Toledo, says David Spurgeon, the first president.

The Outlaws were locked in a bitter war with the Hell's Angels. Bikers from both clubs were getting killed in Charlotte, N.C., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and other cities.

The fight then came to Toledo.

Early Nov. 30, 1980, gunshots rang out in an alley behind the Outlaws' clubhouse on Hawley Street. A member of the club, Ralph Tanner, 25, was found dead. The suspect, Jack Gentry, 33, shot the victim as an initiation rite into the Hell's Angels in Cleveland, prosecutors charged.

His trial in Toledo in 1982 would be written into the history of Lucas County common pleas courts. Dozens of Hell's Angels, including founder Sonny Barger, descended on Toledo, renting a home on Sylvania Avenue.

They wore their “colors” - leather and denim jackets with the Hell's Angels logo - crowding the courtroom halls. Police sharpshooters stood on downtown rooftops, ready for trouble.

To this day, prosecutors believe the witnesses and jurors were intimidated by the show of force. Gentry was acquitted.

Meanwhile, Hicks was released from prison that year after serving two years and 10 months in prison for the stabbing death.

He immediately returned to Toledo, where a party was thrown in his honor by the Outlaws. Despite the increasing biker-gang culture in Toledo, he found that he was no longer on top.

“We had been through so much,” recalls Spurgeon, then chapter president. “I think he wanted to take over again. But I wasn't going to let him. We had taken so much grief because of what he did - a stupid, senseless act. None of us had any idea he was going to stab that boy.''

But it was during the early 1980s that Hicks said he met someone who changed his life: Harry “Taco” Bowman.

Described in court as charismatic and “street smart,” Bowman was president of the Detroit Outlaws and a rising force nationally. He was a frequent visitor to Toledo, where he would attend parties and snort cocaine, Hicks testified. The two would often talk about the future of the Outlaws.

It was the beginning of an association that would last 15 years, say prosecutors. In 1984 - during the height of an ongoing war with Hell's Angels - Bowman became national president at a meeting in Joliet, Ill.

Soon after, Hicks got his break. He said he called Bowman to ask permission to join the Outlaws in Florida, and start anew.

The Sunshine State was “Outlaws territory,” and the Fort Lauderdale chapter was once a powerhouse of the gang's locals. That's where Wayne Hicks would make his stand.

Raymond “Bear” Chaffin was tuning up his motorcycle in his garage near Daytona Beach in 1991 when someone walked inside, put a gun to his head, and squeezed the trigger.

His lifeless body was found by his 12-year-old daughter after riding her bike home from school.

The killing was ordered by Bowman - with Wayne Hicks plotting the way it would be carried out, Hicks testified. The reason: Chaffin was leader of a rival biker gang and was forging ties with the Hell's Angels.

It was one of the dozens of crimes Hicks helped plan - on Bowman's orders - as he climbed his way to the top rung of gang leadership, he claimed in court.

Over the years, Hicks said he became close to the tempestuous leader, who commanded the Outlaws like a major corporation as the gang spread through Canada, Australia, and Europe between 1984 and 1995.

Bowman picked the gang's leaders, their responsibilities divided among geographical territories. Like a Roman legion, there were foot soldiers and street captains, and leaders, like Hicks.

Bowman took over an organization - born in Chicago in 1935 - that was rivaled only by the Hell's Angels in size and notoriety.

Though they may have lacked their rival's business acumen and Hollywood appeal, they were noted for their loyalty and numbers - up to 1,200 at one time.

Like most biker clubs, the Outlaws started as an outlet for motorcycle enthusiasts who didn't want to conform to societal norms. “It was not about committing crimes. It was about brotherhood and freedom,” says Spurgeon.

By the time Hicks arrived in Fort Lauderale in 1985, the local chapter was under FBI investigation.

Members were accused of chain-whipping bar patrons, killing an off-duty policeman during a convenience-store holdup, and stealing cars and motorcycles for parts and money.

Hicks said he tried to forge a new image by cleaning up the clubhouse, cutting the grass, hauling away the trash, and recruiting new members.

But he claimed Bowman, who would call frequent meetings of his regional bosses, was obsessed with eliminating the Hell's Angels.

“If an Outlaw had occasion to come across a Hell's Angel somewhere he could get away with it, he was to take a shot at him, try to kill him,” Hicks said. “We'd go to the other clubhouses trying to figure out how to burn 'em up, blow 'em up, shoot 'em up.”

To be sure, the South Florida chapter, founded in 1967, had a reputation for trouble. One club member, Spider Riesinger, was accused of nailing a woman to a tree for holding out on $10.

Two years after Hicks arrived, a federal task force in 1987 charged 11 Florida Outlaws - including South Florida chapter founder James “Big Jim” Nolan - with 99 crimes, including 12 murders.

The most gruesome charges were the executions of three Hell's Angels tied to cinder blocks and thrown in a rock pit. One ex-girlfriend was shot in the head with a spear-gun, and another was disemboweled and her body dragged from the back of a boat until it broke apart, prosecutors charged. After two years - the longest federal criminal trial in Florida history - six were convicted.

Prosecutors relied on the testimony of former club members and girlfriends - all vying for reduced sentences.

After the trial, Hicks became Florida regional president, with six chapters scattered around the state under his watch.

One former member remembers Hicks well. “He was a talker and a wheeler dealer,” he said.

Despite their legal troubles, the gang pressed forward on new ventures. Hicks said that Bowman became increasingly irritated about Chaffin, a disabled Vietnam veteran who supposedly was trying to bring the Hell's Angels into Florida.

Under Bowman's orders, Hicks said he helped plan the murder of Chaffin during Bike Week in Dayton Beach. The gunman who was selected to do the job was rewarded with full membership in the Outlaws.

“I was glad it had happened,” Hicks testified. “I thought he [the hit man] had taken care of business for the club. ... Mr. Bowman had told me I had done a good job.”

There were other acts of violence, which Hicks said were ordered by Bowman from his Detroit clubhouse fortress. One man was tossed off a hotel balcony in Daytona Beach after he chipped an Outlaws member's tooth.

Hicks said his boss ran the organization with an iron fist - his orders not to be questioned. Two rival Florida clubhouses were firebombed and surveillance was conducted at others.

After years of shootouts, more than 41 Outlaws and associates had been killed in the U.S. and Canada by 1992, according to the FBI, mostly in fights with rival gangs.

After 14 years as an Outlaw, Hicks said he finally gave up in 1995. “Just so many things happened. My heart wasn't in it anymore,” he testified. “Between all the funerals, all the people going to jail. I wanted to get away from it all. I was feeling a lot of pressure to be involved in the war, and everything that was going on, and I just didn't want to do it.”

He admitted he sold drugs, beat up about 20 people, and made money by taking it from his stripper girlfriends.

But in 1995, he said, he decided to become a family man. By then, he had three children from his wife, who he has divorced, and two from a pair of girlfriends. He moved far away, to Key West, Fla., where he lived on a boat to spend more time with his children.

A year later, Hicks and nine others were indicted on a slew of federal racketeering charges, including murder, drug dealing, and fire bombings over the previous 15 years.

The next year, federal agents went after Bowman. He was indicted on numerous racketeering and drug charges, but fled his home in upscale Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., where he was sending his children to private schools and driving an armor-plated Cadillac.

Over the next two years, the leader allegedly moved to a series of safe houses provided by his members. He was once photographed wearing a ball cap with the words:“Snitches Die.”

Finally, he was arrested at a house in Sterling Heights in June, 1999, after a brief standoff with law enforcement agents.

For the first time in years, Bowman and Hicks saw each other in the courtroom two months ago. Both were wearing leg shackles, but this time, they were on opposite sides of the law.

Hicks, a stocky, 5-foot, 8-inches with long hair in a braided ponytail, looked at Bowman only once in his long hours on the stand - when a prosecutor asked Hicks to point out his former leader.

He told the jury he believes his younger brother is still a member of the Outlaws in Toledo, but the two have not talked in several years. “I didn't want to cause him any grief from the club,” he said. “This was something I had to do and he had nothing to do with it.”

In the end, the jury of seven men and five women convicted Bowman of ordering murders, fire bombings, and beatings. He's to be sentenced by federal Judge James Moody on July 27.

Defense lawyers say the case against the Outlaws is built on the testimony of people like Hicks who are desperate for lower sentences. Of the 12 charges against him, 11 were dropped.

The club has members who have committed crimes, but they did so as individuals - not as part of a group conspiracy, they say.

“This is a guy who admitted to killing and dealing drugs,” said Mr. Crawford, the Tampa defense lawyer.

Experts say the membership has dropped over the last decade, from a peak of 1,200 to about 300 today, with many former members dead or in prison.

Hicks faces an uncertain future. He has yet to be accepted into the witness protection program. Since his arrest six years ago, he has pleaded guilty to one conspiracy charge and has been in federal custody, waiting for his own sentencing. But that may not happen for a long time.

His lawyer, George Tragos, has predicted his client could be testifying in trials for years.

The ex-biker's mother says she doesn't know her son's whereabouts, but last month received a Mother's Day card from him. “I pray for him everyday.”

First Published June 3, 2001, 10:30 a.m.