Outlaws MC
The oldest major outlaw motorcycle club — older than the very subculture it came to define — and the Hells Angels’ bitterest American rival. Its skull-and-crossed-pistons “Charlie” and its creed said it plainly: ADIOS.
◆ Back to all clubs ◆Origins
The American Outlaws Association is the oldest of the major outlaw clubs, tracing to a 1935 club that met at Matilda’s Bar on old Route 66 in McCook, Illinois, outside Chicago — predating the Hells Angels by more than a decade.
Reorganized through the 1950s and ’60s into the club known today, the Outlaws grew from that Midwest base into a national and then international force, eventually planting chapters across the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia. They remain one of the U.S. federal “Big Four.”
Charlie & the Creed
The Outlaws’ center patch is “Charlie” — a grinning skull over crossed pistons — and their black-and-white colors are as recognizable as the Angels’ red-and-white. Their institutional hatred of the Hells Angels is encoded in the acronym ADIOS: “Angels Die In Outlaw States.” The club’s mottos — “God Forgives, Outlaws Don’t” — give Tony Thompson’s Outlaws its epigraphs.
The War With the Angels
The foundational rivalry of the American outlaw world. As the Hells Angels expanded east and the Outlaws expanded out from the Midwest, the two oldest clubs collided; by the mid-1970s it was open war — bombings, ambushes and assassinations across the Midwest, the South and into Canada. One of its bloodiest episodes was the “July 4th Massacre” of 1979, when five Outlaws were shot to death in a house in Charlotte, North Carolina — a killing recounted (as club lore) to Pat Matter in Breaking the Code and never officially solved. The club was also penetrated by ATF informant Charles Falco, part of his run through three gangs.
The Canadian Front
The Outlaws established a powerful presence in Ontario and Quebec, absorbing elements of Satan’s Choice in 1977, and for years held the Hells Angels “at the Ontario line” under leader Mario Parente — the story of Jerry Langton’s Showdown. The Outlaws also loom over the case at the heart of Conspiracy of Brothers. See the Canada & Quebec deep-dive.