OFF THE WIRE
Written by
Jaclyn O’Malley
A judge will rule on a prosecutor’s request to keep the names of confidential witnesses sealed until they testify during an October trial related to the fatal rival motorcycle club melee at John Ascuaga’s Nugget.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Karl Hall said four witnesses to the Sept. 6 deadly shooting between California Hells Angels and Vagos motorcycle club members are fearful that motorcycle club members will intimidate or try to kill them or their families. The witnesses testified during earlier grand jury proceedings as confidential informants.
Hall asked Washoe District Judge Connie Steinheimer on Tuesday to order that their names to stay secret until they testify at trial. He requested she send them letters asking if they want to be interviewed by the defense.
Hall stressed that witnesses — in any case — are not obligated to speak to defense attorneys or their investigators before trial and can decline to speak to them without any repercussions. The defense, though, does have the right to at least get an opportunity to try to interview them, he said.
Attorneys David Chesnoff, Biray Dogan and Tehan Slocum opposed Hall’s motion to extend Steinheimer’s current witness protection order. They said it would interfere with their ability to thoroughly cross-examine the witnesses and impede their clients’ right to due process.
Hall proposed that if the witnesses agree to defense interviews, they meet at either the courthouse or his office. He said that would create a safeguard for the witnesses’ safety.
Chesnoff, a celebrity attorney from Las Vegas, told Steinheimer that he had never been involved in a case in his decades of practicing law where names of witnesses were kept confidential.
While the lawyers all said their clients were motorcycle “club” members, multiple police officers on Tuesday testified that the Hells Angels and Vagos are criminal gangs known throughout the country for acts of violence and witness intimidation.
The detectives said they verified this information through long-term federal task force investigations — some in the Reno area — that included wiretaps of members’ phones and interviews with club “hanger-outers,” those who are not yet full members but have involvement in them.
In 2009 and 2011, Reno police investigated two batteries and assaults with knives where the victims later refused to cooperate with the investigation because of intimidation from Hells Angels members, Hall said.
Hall noted that several members of the Reno Hells Angels chapter were present in court, as they had been during previous hearings, showing the overall support members show one another. Detectives testified that in general, chapters of the Hells Angels all contribute money to legal defense funds when one of their members gets arrested.
At least two of the witnesses are employees of the Nugget who told police they witnessed the shootings. Authorities said that the gunfire erupted on a dance floor near Trader Dick’s after Vagos Los Angeles chapter vice president Gary Stuart Rudnick, known as “Jabbers,” was punched in the face by Jeffrey Pettigrew, president of the San Jose, Calif., Hells Angels chapter. Cesar Villagrana, a San Jose Hells Angels member, is accused of then firing a gun inside the casino, and wounding two Vagos members. Ernesto Gonzalez, known as “Romeo,” the president of the Nicaraguan Vagos, is accused of firing four gunshots into Pettigrew’s back and fleeing the scene.
Pettigrew died from his injuries.
Chesnoff said Villagrana fired in self-defense.
Sparks police said they confirmed that the confidential witnesses were present during the shootings through the casino’s video surveillance. Detectives testified that they contacted the witnesses following the shooting, and the witnesses were reluctant to provide any information because it involved “outlaw motorcycle gangs.”
Some witnesses first said they had no information. They later gave a statement when pressed by police that they weren’t telling the truth, Patton and Begbie testified.
The two Vagos members wounded — one in the abdomen and the other in the leg — have declined to cooperate with police, detectives testified. Patton said it followed the “code of silence” in the gang culture.
Hall said that police in California on April 1 went to Cesar Villagrana’s Gilroy, Calif., home that he shares with his parents and brother to arrest him on a warrant charging him with a weapons violation. In his top dresser, they found 26 CDs of court records related to the 2002 shootout at a Laughlin casino where three people were killed during a brawl between the Hells Angels and Mongols. Those records included the names of grand jurors, names of witnesses and a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms operation manual that also included ATF reports about using confidential informants and undercover officers.
“That fact alone creates legitimate concern for witness intimidation,” Hall said of the Laughlin shooting court files in Villagrana’s dresser. “Cesar Villagrana was not a defendant in that case, yet he is in possession of witness and jurors’ names. This clearly indicates the Hells Angels distributes personal information (throughout its membership).”
Hall added that he was worried that Villagrana might try to intimidate fellow Hells Angels as well as witnesses.
Detectives John Patton and Rob Begbie said one witness said that a Hells Angel member present during the incident went to the Nugget and began asking one of the confidential witnesses — an employee — who had seen the shooting. Another witness, they said, had received phone calls from a hotel’s phone number and suspected it was connected to the incident and their knowledge of what happened.
San Bernadino, Calif., police Officer Eric Bennett, who investigates drug crimes, said a federal inquiry into drug trafficking by Vagos led authorities to investigate Rudnick, and a search warrant had been served on Rudnick’s California home. He said Rudnick was tied to a large criminal enterprise related to the Vagos gang.
Steinheimer said she would consider the evidence presented during Tuesday’s hearing and later make her ruling.
Gonzalez, 53, of San Francisco, is charged with Pettigrew’s murder, and is represented by Dogan and Maizie Pusich. Villagrana, 36, is represented by Chesnof and Richard Schonfeld and is charged with Pettigrew’s second-degree murder and battery with a deadly weapon. Rudnick is charged with challenge of a fight with a deadly weapon causing death and conspiracy to engage in an affray, and his attorneys are Slocum and John Malone.
All but Chesnoff and Schonfeld are attorneys in the public or alternate public defender’s office.
