“They’ll fight, then go dormant, then fight again, then patch things up. “They’ve been going at it since the late ’60s,” according to Steve Trethewy, a former Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS) officer who served 25 years on the department’s anti-gang unit.
As so-called “one-percenter” MCs, they emerged from the same amniotic Southern California/Inland Empire biker culture to become bitter rivals, with the Angels playing the proud, powerful incumbents to the Vagos’ motivated upstarts. The Hells Angels and Vagos – also known as “Green Nation” in the outlaw-biker world for their signature color – have a chippy history, to put it mildly. Michael Diecks and his wife, Leslie, had recently moved into the single-family home with their three children – an unremarkable arrangement if not for the fact that Diecks, also known as “Mad Dog Mike,” was a full-patch member of the Vagos motorcycle club. Less well known to the good people of Yuma Drive were the occupants of a house about 300 yards down the road. The house – which once roared with all-night bacchanals and fleets of hard-revving Harleys – had been silent for years. A biker still lived there, but he was ailing and infirm, tethered to oxygen tanks and a motorized scooter. Members of the colorfully named Skull Valley chapter, which was the Angels’ main garrison in north-central Arizona until disbanding in 2006, used it as their clubhouse. How could they not be? For many years, it was a well-trafficked Hells Angels hangout. Like most of their immediate neighbors in the sparse high-desert town of Chino Valley, Arizona, the Schafmans were familiar with the two-story stucco house opposite their multi-acre property on Yuma Drive.
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