Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle by Jerry Langton

the local chapter of Satan’s Choice in the late 1960s at the age of 18. In an earlier interview, Parente confirmed this. It was a good time to get established in that particular gang. They were big and still getting much bigger. So I asked Harris what Parente was like back then.
    He was the exact opposite of hesitant in his answer. “Unlike a lot of guys, as soon as we started noticing him in Satan’s Choice, he’d talk to us,” Harris said. “Always had something to say, usually tried to be funny.” But as personable as he was, Parente also had a darker side, Harris pointed out. “He got in fights, and could sometimes be confrontational.” Parente himself told me his first conviction was for assaulting a Hamilton police officer he witnessed beating up a man he’d already handcuffed. Harris confirmed that.
    I asked Harris what Parente looked like in those days. He told me that the bikers all dressed alike back then, with leather (or even more often, denim) jackets or vests, jeans and T-shirts. They also favored long hair and beards, and Parente was well stocked in both departments. “He had this huge mop of black hair and a big, long beard,” he told me, then thought about it for a second. “He kind of looked like Rasputin.”
    And that’s part of why he got his nickname “The Wop.” While most of Satan’s Choice at the time could trace their roots back to the British Isles or elsewhere in Northwestern Europe, Parente was very clearly Italian.
    But I pointed out to Harris that other prominent members of the Hamilton Satan’s Choice — like Anthony Pantonella — were also of Italian ancestry. He laughed. “Pantonella? He was a skinny kid with a big blonde afro. They called him ‘Cottonhead.’ But Parente looked Italian, he acted Italian.” Harris mentioned that he spoke with his hands. I’d seen that myself firsthand.
    From my conversations with him, I knew Parente did not mind being called “The Wop.” He had even called himself “Mike the Wop” at least once in my presence. So why did he balk at being called Mario?
    â€œHe thought it sounded like a girl’s name,” said Harris.
    Parente was, Harris maintained, a likeable enough guy despite being on the other side of the fence. Interestingly, Parente — who referred to most of the other cops we both knew as “bags of shit” — expressed respect, if not admiration, for Harris. Although he did point out that the big man could be more physical than he had to be at times.
    Harris said that Parente was always up for a joke, and had a jovial way of expressing things. “One of the things I noticed about him early on was that he was always trying to improve himself, to educate himself,” he said. “He always wanted to be more eloquent; and if he learned a new word, you could tell because he would use it over and over again in conversation until he found a new one.”
    Hamilton was one of the Satan’s Choice chapters that patched over to the Outlaws in 1977. Harris immediately noticed a change in Parente. He became more confident. “He was always willing to talk to you, no matter what the situation was like when he was with Satan’s Choice. But once he became an Outlaw, he really worked on his personality and he started speaking for the club. He was their spokesman.”
    He’d offhandedly mention a club event, and Harris would say something like “I’ll see you there.” And that never failed to get a smile out of Parente. Another time, later in Parente’s career, after he had been arrested a few times, Harris ran into him at a bar patio in Hamilton’s trendy Hess Village. He was with two other men with Outlaws jackets on. Before he even saw their rockers, Harris identified them as being from out of town, probably from the United States. He sighed and yelled: “Mike, you’re getting