Chain of Evidence: A True Story of Law Enforcement and One Woman's Bravery
Books / Hardcover
Books › Social Science › General
ISBN: 0525936718 / Publisher: Dutton, September 1994
An inside look at the true-life adventures of Victoria Steele, a California cop who infiltrated the Hell's Angels, sharing their wild lifestyle and eventually busting key members of the organization for drug dealing, extortion, and murder
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Now, for the first time ever, Chain of Evidence tells the riveting, incredible but true story of the most dramatic undercover operation in California's law enforcement history. At the center is Victoria Seele, a special assignments detective for the Orange County Sheriff's Office. A stunningly beautiful woman who graduated at the top of her academy class - and who suffered a morbid terror of motorcycles - she spent eight dangerous months inside the Hell's Angels organization, riding with its members, partying with them, and meticulously gathering evidence. Her cover: posing as the wealthy and decadent girlfriend of a hard-riding biker.The Angel who posed as Seele's "old man" was Cliff Mowery, a tough guy's tough guy, a cop-hating convicted felon with a long history of drug abuse and violent crime, who nevertheless agreed to become a police informer in exchange for quick parole. Already bridling at his unwelcome role of police snitch, could he be trusted to protect Seele from the sexual depredations of his raw-mannered brother bikers - as well as from the frighteningly mercurial, often explosive swings in his own personality?The mastermind of Seele's and Mowery's volatile partnership was Detective Sergeant Wayne Carlander, a hulking career cop from the old school. The operation earned Carlander, Seele, and Mowery a wanted poster offering a $25,000 bounty by the Hell's Angels for their deaths. And, thanks to a chain of evidence painstakingly and perilously constructed, it also paid off with the largest series of arrests in California history, a year of court trials ending in an astounding one-hundred-percent conviction rate, and the permanent eradication of the Hell's Angels organization in Orange County.
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