OFF THE WIRE
The government first indicted hard-core biker Michael Allen "Top Hat" Jones on drug conspiracy and gun charges in 1994, the year Nancy Kerrigan got whacked in the knee, O.J. Simpson led L.A. police on a slow-speed chase and Major League Baseball players refused to play ball.
Jones pleaded guilty that December to selling methamphetamine and possessing an unregistered firearm. A federal judge allowed him to remain free while he awaited sentencing. But Jones skipped the early 1995 hearing and took it on the lam.
Fifteen years passed before the law caught up with Jones, described by a retired federal investigator as a former member of the Gypsy Joker Motorcycle Club. By then, the tatted-up biker wasn't straddling a Harley -- he was riding a tractor.
Police in suburban Tulsa, Okla., stopped Jones on June 12, 2010, after his tractor wiped out a mailbox. Jones handed Broken Arrow patrolman Michael Peale a New Mexico driver's license under the name Marynes Schenk.
Record checks determined Schenk was an alias of Jones, wanted by the feds in Oregon.
The U.S. Marshals Service sent a photo of Jones to Broken Arrow police, according to Peale's report, and officers asked their suspect if he recognized the picture.
"That's me," he said.
Jones was dressed in farm gear -- baseball cap, jeans and leather boots -- but still wore his hair and beard long. His mailing address was a post office box in Muskogee.
Jones, formerly of McMinnville, served time behind bars in Oklahoma for presenting a false ID. He was extradited to Portland late last year to face the music for taking part in a drug dealing conspiracy, possessing an unregistered firearm and failing to show up for sentencing.
U.S. District Judge Malcolm F. Marsh sentenced Jones last week to nine years, three months in prison. The 64-year-old biker agreed to forfeit 26 guns seized from his residence.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/08/biker_who_bolted_meth_gun_char.html
