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Keith Richter – a 62-year-old ex-con known as “Conan the Barbarian” – was returning to his Bay Shore home from a Pagan's Motorcycle Club party in Lancaster, Pennsylvania when he was stopped in Mercer County, New Jersey this past February.
Police found him carrying a loaded .45-caliber Ruger P345 handgun, Acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Rachael A. Honig said.
Rather than risk trial, Richter took a deal from the government, pleading guilty via videoconference with a federal judge in Newark in July to possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
Richter -- who’d served 16 years for conspiracy to commit murder and racketeering-related aggravated assault – has remained in federal custody since his arrest.
He will have to serve out the sentence because there's no parole in the federal prison system.
US District Court Judge Kevin McNulty also sentenced Richter via videoconference from Newark to three years of supervised release.
Identified by the FBI as one of the four major outlaw motorcycle gangs operating in the US – along with the Hells Angels, Outlaws and Bandidos – the “Pagan’s Motorcycle Club” has particularly increased membership in New Jersey and Pennsylvania over the past five years, according to law enforcement authorities.
Although clashes between rival gangs are frequent, members also have randomly assaulted innocent citizens, they said.
A “newfound level of aggression” during what has been a “rapid and ongoing” expansion has included drive-by shootings, “savage beat downs of adversaries and unprovoked physical assaults on members of the public across New Jersey,” a state Commission of Investigation report issued last year said.
The Pagans began with 13 members in Prince George’s County, MD in 1959 and began spreading to neighboring states through the Sixties.
Richter was sent to prison in 1988 for racketeering-related murder conspiracy, among other convictions. He was released in 2012 and took control of the Pagans six years later.
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