Jim Nolan

James Thomas Nolan (also known as "Big Jim"; born c. 1943) is an American outlaw biker and gangster who founded and served as president of the South Florida chapter of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. In 1989, Nolan was convicted for numerous violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, including ordering several murders, extortion, and narcotics and prostituting offenses, and sentenced to fifty years in federal prison.

Early life Nolan was born in New Jersey and moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1955. He attended South Broward High School in Hollywood, Florida and completed two years of college.

Outlaws Nolan founded the Iron Cross motorcycle gang in West Palm Beach in the early 1960s and was president of the gang when the Chicago-based Outlaws dispatched a representative, Donald "Deke" Tanner, to Florida in the spring of 1967 with the assignment of founding a chapter in the state. Nolan began an association with Tanner and assisted him in merging various Florida biker gangs — including the Iron Cross, the Cossacks, the Half-Breeds, and the Outcasts — to form the Outlaws' South Florida chapter, with the "patch over" ceremony taking place at Kitty's Saloon, a roadside bar on State Road A1A in Juno Beach, in July 1967. The South Florida chapter initially used Kitty's Saloon as a clubhouse, and its members resided in a dozen cabins behind the saloon, which they rented from the saloon's owner, Bertha "Kitty" Randall. Nolan served as president of the Fort Lauderdale chapter and as regional president of the Outlaws in Florida for over ten years. Biker historians have credited Nolan with convincing the Outlaws' leadership, headquartered in the Midwest, of the importance of taking control of the Southern United States, and the state of Florida specifically. The crime reporter Scott Burnstein described him as "the Outlaws overall patriarch in the Sunshine State and the South Florida chapter's revered Godfather". Due to the aggressive membership drive in the early 1970s, Florida eventually had the largest concentration of Outlaws in the United States. During Nolan's presidency, Outlaws members were forbidden from retiring from the club under threat of violence. The bikers maintained control over these women using various methods, including gathering information on and threatening the lives of their families, and would occasionally buy and sell their old ladies amongst themselves. The Florida faction of the Outlaws gained power and influence within the club by forging links with Colombian and Cuban drug suppliers, sourcing cocaine being imported into the state from Colombia, which they then distributed to chapters in the Midwest and on the East Coast. In addition to cocaine, the Outlaws also sold wholesale quantities of methamphetamine and heroin in Broward County. To save face, Rogers told his fellow Outlaws that he had been attacked by a dozen Hells Angels. In the spring of 1974, Nolan learned that three members of the Hells Angels' Lowell, Massachusetts chapter were traveling to South Florida. Police believe Hartman and Riley were also in Florida to source narcotics. Nolan called a club meeting to discuss what course of action the Outlaws should take regarding the presence in their territory of the "maggots" who had beaten their "brother" Peter Rogers.

After receiving information that Hartman, Riley and Simmons would be at the Pastime Bar, a Fort Lauderdale tavern, on April 30, 1974, Nolan and other members of the South Florida Outlaws went to the bar and began discussing their differences with the Hells Angels before suggesting they take the discussion "off the street". When the Hells Angels arrived at the Outlaws' clubhouse, however, Nolan ordered several fellow club members to take the rival bikers to a deserted area and "make sure they don't come back"․ Four Outlaws — Henry "Funky Tim" Amis, William "Gatemouth Willie" Edson, Norman "Spider" Risinger, and Ralph "Lucifer" Yannotta — then forced the Hells Angels into the back of a van at gunpoint, bound them with pink clothesline and drove them to a quarry in the Everglades of southwest Broward County near Andytown, where Risinger killed each of them execution-style with a 12-gauge shotgun. The bodies of the trio were weighed down with eight concrete cinder blocks and submerged in a flooded, twenty-feet-deep rock pit. The other two were found by police divers.

Edson was arrested in Canada for an unrelated crime in 1976 and subsequently turned state's evidence when he was extradited back to the United States, naming himself, Amis, Risinger and Yannotta as those who committed the triple homicide on the orders of Nolan. In 1977, the Hells Angels attempted to resolve the feud between the clubs by sending Sandy Alexander, along with Oakland, California chapter members Sergey Walton and Gary Popkin, to meet with Nolan and other Outlaws leaders in Durham, North Carolina. Nolan and his contingent did not show at the "sit-down", however. Along with Amis, Edson, Risinger and Yannotta, Nolan was indicted by a grand jury in connection with the killings in April 1978, charged with three counts of first-degree murder. Edson and Yannotta, along with two other Outlaws, John "Egor" Loose and Dale "Brackett" Webb, testified against Nolan in exchange for lesser sentences. At the time of their testimony, Edson was serving a twenty-year prison sentence for torturing a woman; Loose was serving a twenty-year sentence for beating a woman with a table leg; Webb, a former president of the Orlando Outlaws chapter, was serving life for kidnapping; and Yannotta was serving four concurrent life sentences for murder. The Outlaws tied Karleen to a chair at the clubhouse and stripped her of her blouse before each took turns punching and kicking her and then using a hot spoon to sear her repeatedly on her arms and breasts. After they had finished torturing Karleen, the bikers escorted other Outlaws old ladies into the room while she remained tied to a chair, and warned the other women that they would receive the same treatment if they misbehaved. Karleen was then dumped in a remote field. Several Outlaws were later convicted of the beating after she reported the incident to the police. Nolan took Geoghagen to Arizona with him, leading her to believe that she would be treated to a thirty-day "honeymoon" during which she would not be required to work as a prostitute. There was no honeymoon, however, and he did in fact require her to work as a prostitute. Nolan also began to frequently beat Geoghagen after they had moved to Tucson, inflicting a broken rib on her on one occasion. In January 1981, Geoghagen visited her sick mother in Florida, although Nolan could not accompany her because of the terms of his parole. He threatened to kill her stepfather, who was her mother's sole caretaker, if she did not return from the trip. When Geoghagen asked Nolan if she could buy her freedom, he told her that it would cost her $125,000, but that she could not pay with her prostitution earnings as that money belonged to him. He discharged thirteen rounds from a 9 mm handgun and hit McQuillen eight times after McQuillen brandished a .38-caliber handgun.

Nolan was arrested immediately afterwards by a Tucson police officer, who had witnessed the shooting from a distance, and charged with murder by state authorities. After procuring bail on the murder charges, Nolan was arrested at his home on August 25, 1981, by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on federal weapons possession charges in connection with the shooting of McQuillen. Due to fears for her safety, Geoghagen was placed under police protection.

The racketeering trial of Nolan and five other South Florida Outlaws began in Fort Lauderdale on January 27, 1988, after five weeks of jury selection.

Following a 14-month trial, the longest in the history of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Nolan was convicted on January 23, 1989, of violating and conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).