What does it actually cost to go undercover for two years with one of America's most violent outlaw motorcycle gangs?
Blake Boteler knows. He's the retired ATF special agent who spent two years as "Bo" — a prospect, then a patch-wearing member of the Sons of Silence — in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His 1963 Harley Davidson and undercover jacket are now in the National Law Enforcement Museum. Craig Floyd, who ran the National Law Enforcement Officer's Memorial Fund, named Blake his Officer of the Month in July 2002.
In Part 1, Blake breaks down what deep cover really looks like — and it's not nine to five.
Before a word is spoken about the Sons of Silence, Blake describes the moment that set everything in motion: a gas-station robbery in Oklahoma City, a class ring taken at gunpoint, a dumpster search with his father, and a suspect tracked down through a girlfriend's white dog. That letter from the DA ended up in his ATF interview. ATF offered him a job before anyone else did.
From there: how you cold-call your way into a motorcycle gang when you have no informants. How you pass a girl test that isn't about what you think it's about.
How you manage the three dilemmas — violence, drugs, and women — when you can't blow your cover and you won't compromise your ethics. And how you live when you're actually living three lives: Bo the outlaw, Blake the ATF agent, and Blake the husband and father of three children who once watched his kids play tee-ball from a parking lot — and had to let a police officer question him for it without saying a word.
Bill Erfurth — retired Miami-Dade detective who infiltrated the Genovese and Bonanno crime families in South Florida — joins the conversation to compare notes.
Same world, entirely different approach.
It ends on the Fourth of July. Blake is in jail. He watches fireworks through his cell window.
In Part 2: 230 weapons seized. A $50,000 contract on his life. And an arrest plan built around a hearse, a fake funeral, and a cemetery plot in Colorado Springs.
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