Undercover Angels : Books: A celebrated case that virtually cleared Orange County of notorious bikers in the ‘70s is the subject of the new ‘Chain of Evidence.’

It’s 1970, white eye shadow is still in, and you’ve just graduated from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department academy, first in your class.

Fast forward to 1976. After a rapid rise through the ranks, its time to transfer to an undercover drug detail.

Meet your new partner, one Wayne Carlander. He’s a sunflower-seed-chomping, clever veteran who’s talked robbers into surrendering and turning over the loot, all without moving his 300-pound, 6-feet-6 body from his desk. Oh, did we mention that he’s a chauvinist?

Your first assignment: Pose as a biker girlfriend of a real convicted robber and infiltrate the Hells Angels. This means riding around all day on the back of a Harley-Davidson, even though you are petrified of motorcycles, hanging out in scudsy biker dens with guys named Bruno and Bugger Butch, buying drugs and hoping nobody recognizes you for the cool blond detective that you are.

“Yeah,” Victoria Seele says, laughing now, 18 years later, a happily married, out-of-state suburban mom and businesswoman who hasn’t packed a gun in a decade. “I was pretty young and naive and adventurous to do all that, wasn’t I?”

Clinging to the waist of an undercover informant, Carlander trailing them in a surveillance vehicle, the trio pulled off the biggest undercover operation of the time against outlaw bikers. And the Hells Angels haven’t been back to these parts since.

So says “Chain of Evidence,” (Dutton, $21.95) a book out this month by a first-time author who calls himself Michael Detroit, “because the Hells Angels might not like some of what I wrote about them.” He tells the 18-year-old story of how Seele posed as the rich girlfriend of undercover informant Cliff Mowery, a prisoner released early to help infiltrate the fledgling Hells Angels chapter in Orange County.

Carlander, the low-key mastermind of the case, convinced Sheriff Brad Gates that a violent convict sprung from prison could be trusted and the trio could kick some biker butt.

When the end came eight months later, 125 officers from Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties simultaneously moved in and arrested 77 suspects, most of them bikers, 19 of them Hells Angels. They included the secretary and sergeant-at-arms of the L.A. chapter. Besides getting them off the streets, prime booty included a cache of club financial records and membership lists of every Angel in the U.S. and Europe.

There were so many defendants during seven months of trials that judges throughout Orange County volunteered to increase their caseloads, even scheduled lower-court and civil cases at night, so the numerous biker cases could be tried promptly.

All but one of the 77 defendants was convicted and sentenced to prison.

“Police penetration of the gang,” says the book’s prologue, “was accomplished by three extraordinary people who paid prices too high. One would die, one would flee the state under a different name, and the other would become a reluctant hero.”

*

Look for the ex-partners soon on national daytime shows, with their first appearance scheduled Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Seele (a pseudonym) will alter her looks and intends to wing it with the likes of Joan Lunden, she said during a two-hour phone interview.

Despite wanted posters the book says Hells Angels circulated promising a $25,000 reward for their murders, Seele is no longer skittish about retribution. Carlander never did worry much about that and remains a sergeant with the department.

A self-effacing investigator, Carlander doesn’t expect to get much attention and figures the TV types will be more interested in the juicy details from Seele. She is, after all, the one who entrusted her life to a criminal and partied with the Angels for eight long months, her performance so convincing that besides fooling the bikers, a captain told reporters that police were stopping the undercover officer and informant daily.

“I wouldn’t say I’m afraid; I would say I’m cautious,” Seele said. “At the time, I would say I was paranoid and neurotic, but I view the (television) appearances as calculated risk.” “I’m certainly not doing this for the money,” she added. “It’s certainly not worth compromising yourself in even this small way for the money. But this whole (publicity) thing is to give some insight into the book and have some fun. After all, this is entertaining. It’s a kick! How many people can say that they’ve done something that turned into a book?”

*

Penetrating biker clubs is audacious and risky. That Seele lasted undetected for eight months is impressive.

“They are very tough to infiltrate,” said Special Agent Ray Lochridge, who in the 1970s worked undercover some with bikers himself and now is the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Los Angeles spokesman. “You’ve got to do some illegal activities to be initiated as a member, so it really eliminated the infiltration by special agents and informants. And it’s pretty risky to be found working as an informant for the Hells Angels. You could get tortured, mutilated, killed. . .

“That is a remarkable story. I would say a lot has to do with the individual who brought her in. To come in cold is unheard of.”

Enter Mowery.

When Carlander first approached Mowery at the Orange County Jail, Mowery looked as tough as his rap sheet indicated. A muscular 6-feet-4 with 32 tattoos (Hells Angels wings and a hangman’s noose dominated his chest), he was on parole for armed robbery when the CHP stopped him and found him with a gun. Facing return to Soledad state prison, he agreed to Carlander’s plot to infiltrate the Hells Angels locally.

Ray Glore, Hells Angels sergeant-at-arms of the L.A. club, was a target from the start, an alleged producer of high-quality methamphetamine that was finding its way onto Southern California streets. Mowery would be key to unlocking the club door.

For eight months, Mowery was kept in a motel--now called the Key Inn--visible from the Santa Ana Freeway in Tustin. Most nights Carlander and other sheriff’s detectives would eyeball his room from a parked car, making sure he did not venture out into trouble. If charm were a felony, Mowery would be doing life without parole. That and his good looks made him a magnet for women, and at one point he seduced another undercover detective who was fired when she was caught sneaking out of Mowery’s room.

He had no similar effect on Seele, who saw his drunken meanness and capacity for violence; besides, she was happily married to an electrical contractor who was supportive and patient while his wife grew edgier month by month. Holding it all together was Carlander.

“I owe him my life,” Seele says earnestly. “For a combination of everything from start to finish. I would never have involved myself if it wasn’t for the fact that Wayne was my partner. We had an incredible situation that took an incredible handling, and I don’t think Cliff (Mowery) could have been handled by anyone else. Wayne has this incredible skill with people. He can sit down and talk to people and I don’t care who it is, but especially convicts, felons. He knew how to deal with them, give them the degree of respect that’s important to them, and he has perfect timing. He knew when to back off, when to apply pressure, when to call their bluff.”

One night, Mowery was acting up and challenged Carlander, whose solution was immediate and served to take control while not antagonizing an angry sociopath. He suggested a contest to see who could hit a power pole with a rock. And he won.

“That’s Wayne,” Seele said, laughing. “He handled that so quick. I would have pulled out my gun and shot (Mowery).”

Had Mowery gotten into serious trouble, the undercover operation would have been finished. It was that simple. He required constant managing and finesse. Besides the deputy’s tete-a-tete, the case was almost ruined again when Mowery got drunk and started a donnybrook with a Santa Ana officer called to a doughnut shop where Mowery was causing trouble.

Carlander persuaded the officer--whom Mowery had beat up--to drop charges against the undercover informant.

As the undercover pair ingratiated themselves with bikers, the book says: “They made buys in various parts of the county on a daily basis. They would do a deal for a gram of meth in Fullerton, ride the chopper to Stanton for three balloons of heroin, go to Garden Grove for two grams of cocaine, then take another ride to San Bernardino for more meth and a conversation about guns. Or stolen cars. Or hot electronics and where to sell them. And Carlander, often with (Detective) Bud Nease, would follow behind them. In addition to roaring from one drug-infested neighborhood to the next, Victoria and Mowery would attend parties at bikers’ houses or simply hang out in their favorite bars.”

Seele did not initially fit in, but nobody questioned her presence. Even with her stunning athletic physique and long platinum hair, she always wrapped her head in a bandanna. With her intimidating sidekick and their revving chopper, mothers often shielded their small children from the pair.

Mowery was already “included as a regular, although he was not officially a member of any club,” the book says. “It had become common knowledge that the Angels liked what they saw in Mowery,” and the Angels state vice-president told him he would sponsor Mowery.

Seele’s cover story was that she was Mowery’s girlfriend, a rich divorcing woman who was selling drugs to her housewife girlfriends until her property settlement. The alibi also helped her retain her innate gentility, although she had to defer to Mowery in the presence of the men and women with whom she sat around bars and downtrodden trailers.

To the surprise of the undercover team, Mowery came to Seele’s rescue a couple of times and made it clear to other bikers that, unlike many of them, he would not be sharing his woman with the club. It did not hurt that Mowery’s 6-feet-4 body was scarred from past battles. Carlander once watched him at a motorcycle swap meet in L.A. take on all attacking bikers with a chopper kickstand--while a knife was dangling out of his side.

Despite the generally bad treatment most biker women receive, Seele managed to actually enjoy a big bar party one night in which she won the wet T-shirt contest after various Hells Angels soaked her top.

“I was young; I was naive, what can I say? I would never do it again today,” Seele says with a sigh.

*

The undercover team knew that one day it would end, as many such operations do, when they suspected someone was on to them. It happened to Seele one night while she and Mowery were buying drugs in a couple’s home. The woman had been in jail while Seele was working there. Seele was sure she had been recognized; the operation was over that night.

Seele slept for long periods and did not leave her house. Days later the sweep began.

On April 14, 1977, then-deputy district attorney Ron Kreber (now a judge) presented his evidence before an Orange County grand jury, which returned 57 indictments for 77 alleged felons. All but one of the Hells Angels made bail, and he was extradited to Connecticut on a fugitive warrant for murder.

The biggest Angel they captured was Michael Lee (Bruno) Mason, owner of a Santa Ana motorcycle shop in which the undercover officer bought drugs. The secretary-treasurer of the L.A. chapter, he was said to lead the budding Orange County chapter.

The day original target Glore got out on bail, his body was found with 12 bullets in it in the home where he had kept files of every Hells Angel member in the U.S. and Europe. From his home, officers had also taken extensive records relating to Hells Angels that, the book says, were “a huge windfall of otherwise impossible-to-get information about the inside operations of a secret criminal enterprise.”

An Angels hit-man was allegedly brought out from New York to take out the cops and Mowery, who was hidden in a series of motel rooms until after he bravely stared down courtrooms packed with bikers and testified against them.

Seele never did testify, and the media helped protect her identity by never using her or Carlander’s real names or photographs.

*

Carlander minimizes his role in the case and is circumspect about his private life, which is less elaborated upon than Seele’s in the book.

“She and I, we’d go around on some things, but she did a dynamite, dynamite job,” Carlander said with obvious fondness for a friend of 18 years. “She was a great partner.”

Nine months ago, Carlander transferred to a lower-profile job, waiting out his retirement as sergeant of inmate transportation. The father of two girls and a boy, Carlander is looking forward in 360 working days to a life of golf, betting the ponies and playing with his grandchildren.

The book, he says, will in some small way give them a legacy and something for which they can be proud of him.

“Can’t ask for more than that,” he adds.

After two months off to recuperate and consider her future, Seele realized she had an even more promising future with the sheriff’s department. She had spent only 10 months working in the women’s jail--where female employees were then stuck--before assignment to a special burglary team, and she clearly proved her skills in the biker case. Sheriff Gates told the “Chain of Evidence” author that, had she stayed with the department, she’d be running it today.

But Seele had no interest in being at a desk, being a boss. She felt she had already cheated fate on the streets.

“I thought, ‘let’s not push the odds.’ I made it through this. I learned that I had some abilities under pressure that I no way knew I was capable of. I had received a tremendous gift and opportunity from the department, but I couldn’t really use it at the department.”

So Seele quit and changed her name, moving with her husband to another state. Just as she launched her own business, which involves “risk management and consulting,” she discovered she was pregnant. She would have three children, the oldest now 12. After a seven-year break, she has returned to her business, now that all of her children are in school.

For months after the busts, she kept her .38 revolver on the shower ledge. Once she almost drew down on her husband, who came home from work early one afternoon while she was bathing. She has guns locked away now.

Her kids know Mom was a cop, but they’ll have to wait a while to watch her videotaped TV appearances or to read “Chain of Evidence.”

“They won’t be reading the book for at least a couple more years,” she says. “Oh, Lord, no. But I’ll save an autographed book for them. Autographed, ‘From Mom.’ ”

Cliff Mowery left California, too, bound for a job in the Oklahoma oil fields. But upon his return to California a while later, he “died in a mysterious motorcycle accident,” the book publicist said in a dramatic whisper.

The book ends with Mowery’s death in an apparent freeway motorcycle crash, but the implication is clear: It might have been a retribution killing for his work as an informant. But there is no proof of that.