Jay Dobyns

Born: July 24, 1961, Hammond, Indiana
Nicknames: Jay “Bird” Davis (undercover name), Jaybird
Associations (undercover): Hells Angels, Solo Angeles

For Jay Dobyns, fitting in with the Hells Angels outlaw motorcycle gang for almost two years meant adhering to his undercover persona, Jay “Bird” Davis, to the point of obsession. To maintain his cover, he had to divert his mind away from his wife and children. And at the time he thought it would be worth it.

Born in Indiana but raised in Tucson, Arizona, Dobyns aimed to play professional football as a young man. After exceling in high school football, Dobyns was a starting wide receiver for the University of Arizona for three years, receiving top honors from the Pac-10 Conference. He played professional football for one season in the USFL before looking for another career path. He joined the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in 1987.

Dobyns had hit his best clandestine ruse yet while in Arizona in 2001, after 15 years of service as an undercover special agent with the ATF. While working undercover cases in the late 1980s, he’d been injured twice. The first was only four days after he joined the ATF, from a point-blank gunshot wound to the back by a suspect who held him hostage in Tucson. The second time was when gunrunners hit him with a car during an attempted getaway in Chicago. He took part in investigations of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Other undercover roles ended in the arrests of a Mexican drug boss and members of the Aryan Brotherhood gang.

Altogether, he served in more than 500 undercover operations disguised as a hitman or Mob debt collector. The organized crime groups he infiltrated primarily engaged in drug and firearms trafficking.

In a 2001 case, his undercover purchase of 30 pipe bombs (needed, as he told the suspected bomb makers, for a home invasion) ended in six arrests in Arizona. Dobyns also worked that year in the Bullhead City area to gather intelligence as “Davis” for the ATF in northern Arizona. He posed as a gun seller and an enforcer for a nonexistent collections agency. However, the operation came to a halt in 2002, with the now-famous River Run riot. During the annual River Run motorcycle rally in Laughlin, Nevada, a brawl and shootout broke out between members of the Hells Angels and the Mongols, their bitter rivals, at the Harrah’s hotel-casino. Two Angels and one Mongol died, and dozens of people were injured.

The ATF brass reassigned him to penetrate the Hells Angels club, which the agency saw as an organized crime group. Dobyns certainly had the physical part down with his beard and 6-foot-1 frame. Later, an Angels member applied tattoos covering his upper arms to help solidify his undercover charade as a gang member.

Dobyns teamed up with another ATF agent, two other undercover officers and a pair of paid informants. The idea was to create a fake biker gang with the aid of one of the informants who once served in a motorcycle gang based in Tijuana, Mexico. The informant and Dobyns would run the gang, called the Solo Angeles, promote it as a pro-Hells Angels crew, and lodge a request to enroll with the Angels as a “nomad” chapter (not tied to a specific charter or location). The ATF named the case “Operation Black Biscuit.” To gain legitimacy, Dobyns and a fellow agent feigned the execution of a Mongol by tying up an officer playing the part, putting cow brains and bloody Mongol clothing on him, and taking a photo. The Angels took the bait and let Dobyns’ crew hang out and ride with them. They trusted him so much that they offered to make him a member of the Angels’ Skull Valley Chapter.

He was the first law enforcement officer to infiltrate the Angels. His undercover penetration of the Angels lasted more than 20 months, one of the longest ever for the ATF. He earned so much respect from the Angels that he received a “full patch” gang insignia.

In the end, the operation yielded 36 indictments against Hells Angels members, 16 related directly to Dobyns’s undercover efforts. But amid problems between the ATF and Justice Department lawyers, the criminal case fell through in federal court. Federal prosecutors blamed the ATF, saying the agency did not reveal evidence obtained from informants. Worse, in 2006, the feds in Las Vegas dropped racketeering charges against all but four of 42 Angels charged in the Laughlin riot, leaving little to show for Dobyns’ extensive and dangerous undercover work. That year, the Justice Department’s inspector general issued two reports critical of ATF management, and that August, ATF director Carl Truscott resigned.

Dobyns’ own battle with the ATF soon began. He filed a $1 million lawsuit in federal court, alleging the agency did not protect him while he was on duty. He won a $373,000 settlement in 2007. The next year, Dobyns’s wife and two kids barely escaped after someone firebombed their family home in Tucson. The ATF investigated Dobyns himself as a suspect in the arson. He felt embittered that his former employer would believe he tried to endanger his own family. Authorities later cleared him of involvement in the arson.

In 2013, a year before he retired after 27 years with the ATF, Dobyns filed another suit, for $17.2 million, claiming the ATF failed to safeguard his family amid death threats from the Hells Angels for his undercover mission and the arrests that followed. In 2014, Judge Francis Allegra ruled in his favor, awarding him $173,000 for emotional distress. Allegra harshly rebuked two ATF agents whom he said “allowed him to be treated as a suspect” in the firebombing “as a form of payback” out of resentment over the 2007 lawsuit.

The Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder appealed. Certain facts embarrassing to federal prosecutors soon emerged. Justice Department attorney Valerie Bacon had asked the ATF not to reopen the probe into the arson of Dobyns’ residence, because it might help him in his lawsuit. Bacon soon left the department.

In his ruling on the appeal, Judge Allegra voided his own monetary judgement to Dobyns, but recommended discipline for certain ATF personnel. He barred seven Justice Department attorneys from the case and ordered a special master to investigate government actions. He also ordered an investigation into possible misconduct by the feds in the arson inquiry. But the judge left the bench for health reasons, died of cancer, and a new judge entered the case. The special master, in a report after Allegra’s death, said that the first case was fair enough and required no further probe into the government’s conduct. Allegra’s replacement as judge accepted the recommendation, leaving Dobyns without the justice he sought in court.

Dobyns remains active in retirement. He has authored two books, one on his undercover experiences and another on his travails with the ATF. He delivers lectures on his life to audiences at universities and law enforcement organizations.