Ralph Hubert "Sonny" Barger (8 October 1938 - 29 June 2022) was an American outlaw biker and a founding member of the Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels (in 1957).
Biography[]
Ralph Hubert Barger was born in Modesto, California in 1938, and he was raised in Oakland. He forged his birth certificate in order to join the US Army in 1955, but he was honorably discharged fourteen months later after his age was discovered to have been faked. He proceeded to join the Oakland Panthers motorcycle club in 1956, and, on 1 April 1957, he cofounded the Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels. Barger oversaw the gang's expansion into southern California and its merger with smaller motorcycle clubs, and he also worked as a machine operator from 1960 to 1965, when he was fired for extended absences. He was repeatedly arrested for marijuana possession and for assault with a deadly weapon during the 1960s, and, in the late 1960s, he became a heroin dealer and a cocaine addict.
From 1966 to 1973, he advised film projects as a side job, from which he derived the majority of his income. During the Vietnam War, the Hells Angels attacked anti-war protesters, and Barger even sent a letter to President Lyndon B. Johnson offering his gang's services as a "crack group of trained guerrillas" for demoralizing the Viet Cong and to "advance the cause of freedom." The gang also cooperated with the Oakland Police Department by informing on the Black Panther Party and Weather Underground's black market weapons operations in exchange for the release of imprisoned Hells Angels. He was present at the 6 December 1969 Altamont Free Concert, where his gang got into a fight with crowd members who vandalized the Hells Angels' motorcycles, killed the gun-toting Black audience member Meredith Hunter (whom they believed threatened the bands who were performing), and also knocked Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane unconscious during the scuffle. During the 1970s and 1980s, Barger continued to be in and out of jail, as his gang was involved in drug and weapons trafficking, among other major criminal offenses.
He was imprisoned in Phoenix from 1987 to 1992, and, in 1998, he returned to Arizona with his family and joined the Hells Angels' Cave Creek chapter in Maricopa County. In 2000, he released his best-selling autobiography, and he served eight days in jail in 2003 for domestic violence. He returned to Oakland in 2016, and he testified at the 2018 trial of Bandidos Motorcycle Club president Jeffrey Fay Pike and vice president Xavier John Portillo. He died of liver cancer in 2022 at the age of 83.