Clarence Addie “Butch” Crouch was a founding member of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club who left Texas to join the Hells Angels, rose to vice president of the club’s Cleveland chapter in the 1970s, and later confessed to murder and became a federal informant. His cooperation with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives put his wife and three young children into the U.S. Witness Protection Program, and he died in 2013 in what investigators treated as a murder-suicide at his rural Texas home.
From Bandidos Founder to Cleveland Hells Angel
Born in 1940, Crouch had a criminal record before he was an adult, including burglary, assault, rape, and theft. At eighteen he stabbed a man in Texas and drew a five-year sentence at Huntsville Prison for attempted murder in 1959.1The Montana Quarterly. Witness Protection
In 1966 he became one of the seven original members of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club in Houston.2Happy Scribe Podcasts. Relative Unknown, Ep. 3: Butch3Cleveland Scene. Red All Over: A Former Cleveland Hells Angel and Confidential Informant’s Path From Destruction to Redemption and Back He grew dissatisfied, turned in his patch, and moved to San Francisco intending to join the Hells Angels. After roughly a year around the club there, he was brought to Oakland to meet founder Sonny Barger, who told him his reputation preceded him. Several Cleveland Hells Angels had been jailed after a double homicide in 1968 and the charter had been frozen. Barger sent Crouch to Ohio to rebuild it.
He was twenty-eight when he relocated to Cleveland and received his patch.
Vice President of the Cleveland Chapter
Through the 1970s, Crouch served as vice president of the Cleveland Hells Angels.4Cleveland Scene. Red All Over He managed gang violence, ran feuds with the Breed and the Outlaws, and oversaw the chapter’s “TCB” — Taking Care of Business — fund that paid for wars with rival clubs. The chapter’s activities under his tenure included murder, pimping, drug trafficking, theft, witness intimidation, and bribery.
In 1971, a brawl between the Hells Angels and the Breed at Cleveland’s Polish Women’s Hall led to eighty-five arrests. Crouch stabbed a man to death during the fighting. Indicted for first-degree murder, he received only probation and time served, an outcome he later attributed to a bribe paid to Judge Frank Gorman.1The Montana Quarterly. Witness Protection After 1971, he said, killing became a route to full membership, narcotics money increasingly financed the club’s wars, and bombs and booby traps entered its arsenal.4Cleveland Scene. Red All Over
On June 9, 1974, he shot and killed eighteen-year-old Donald Della Serra, who was working on a motorcycle at a friend’s house in Akron. Prosecutors said the intended target had been Steven “Groundhog” Wargo, an Outlaws member who had once lived at the address. Crouch admitted to being the triggerman years later, after he flipped.5UPI Archives. Hells Angels National Treasurer Acquitted
The Sigley Bombing
On January 7, 1975, a suitcase bomb was left at the door of a Cleveland home. Twenty-six-year-old Burdell Offitt carried it inside, and it detonated. The blast killed Offitt, twenty-one-year-old Maryanne Sigley, and her two-year-old son Michael, and injured three others. Hells Angels members Harold Chakirelis and Richard Amato were arrested and indicted. Crouch later said the pair had targeted the house believing an Outlaw lived there.6Cleveland Scene. Harold Chakirelis, Longtime Cleveland Hells Angel Member and Suspect in Infamous Sigley Bombing, Has Died
The case fell apart in court. Judge James McGettrick dismissed the charges against Amato, and prosecutors withdrew the charges against Chakirelis. McGettrick was later found to have accepted a bribe tied to the case; he was indicted and pleaded no contest in 1985.6Cleveland Scene. Harold Chakirelis, Longtime Cleveland Hells Angel Member and Suspect in Infamous Sigley Bombing, Has Died
Three civilians dead, one of them a toddler, fractured what remained of Crouch’s loyalty to the club.7Business Insider. A Member of US Witness Protection for 44 Years Says the Program Made Her Life Worse
Turning Informant
On November 5, 1981, Crouch walked away from the Hells Angels and contacted the ATF. Under a negotiated plea deal, he confessed to the 1974 Akron shooting death of Della Serra and received a ten-to-forty-year sentence, of which he served eight years.4Cleveland Scene. Red All Over
In exchange, he gave the government information on a wide range of Hells Angels crimes: the Sigley bombing, the homicides of Bruce Sunday, Denise Padavick, and Richard Spears, and bombings tied to John Del Zappo and Thomas Norton. He testified as a state witness in three trials during the 1980s.8UPI Archives. Protected Witnesses: Major Weapon Against Crime Or Danger to US Society
Why the Prosecutions Failed
Despite what he offered, only one of the three trials Crouch testified in produced a conviction.8UPI Archives. Protected Witnesses: Major Weapon Against Crime Or Danger to US Society Defense lawyers hammered his credibility as an admitted killer, drug dealer, and pimp.
He testified twice against Andrew Shission, the Hells Angels’ national treasurer. In Cuyahoga County, Crouch said Shission had killed a rival to earn his patch; the judge dismissed the aggravated murder charge for lack of corroboration. In Summit County, prosecutors alleged Shission had stolen the car used in the Della Serra shooting knowing it would be used to kill. A jury acquitted him in October 1983.5UPI Archives. Hells Angels National Treasurer Acquitted Crouch also testified against Amato in a case tied to the Sigley bombing, which McGettrick, the bribed judge, dismissed. An undercover ATF agent later exposed McGettrick after baiting him at a bar.4Cleveland Scene. Red All Over
What It Cost His Family
Shortly after he turned himself in, U.S. Marshals came to the family’s Cleveland home overnight and took his three children — seven-year-old Jackee, her five-year-old sister, and their two-year-old brother — out in black vans.9ABC News. Children in Witness Protection Struggle to Reclaim Identities The family moved through a safe house and Florida before being relocated to a Billings, Montana motel. The Witness Protection Program provided a monthly stipend but no new birth certificates, no winter clothing for Montana, and no counseling for the children.7Business Insider. A Member of US Witness Protection for 44 Years Says the Program Made Her Life Worse
Crouch spent about a year traveling to testify before beginning his prison sentence. His oldest daughter, given the name Jackee Taylor and forbidden from using her original birth certificate, said the lack of valid documents later blocked her from marrying, enrolling in college, taking out loans, and enrolling her children in Medicaid.10Yahoo News. A Member of US Witness Protection for 44 Years Says the Program Made Her Life Worse
Death in East Texas
After his release in the early 1990s, Crouch lived under aliases and eventually settled in rural east Texas as Paul Dome. On July 8, 2013, the Marion County Sheriff’s Department responded to a fire at a brick house on Farm Road 729 near Avinger. Crouch, then seventy-three, was found dead in his vehicle from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Inside the torched house were the bodies of his wife, Vivian Dome, eighty-five, shot once in the chest, and his stepson, Willard Landry, sixty-one, shot in the chest and head. Investigators determined both had been killed before the fire was set, and found flame retardant in the grass and along the fence line. Federal agents were seen at the scene collecting evidence.4Cleveland Scene. Red All Over
In the months before, Crouch had been seeking disability and Medicare benefits, dealing with severe health problems, and caring for his ailing wife and terminally ill stepson. A letter dated March 25, 2013, expressed extreme frustration with the government and the Witness Protection Program. Neighbors who knew the couple only as the Domes described them as universally beloved.
How the Story Became Public
For decades, the family’s identity stayed hidden. In 2011, Jackee Taylor, then thirty-four, broke her cover in an interview with Billings Gazette reporter Greg Tuttle so she could obtain the documentation needed to get her children healthcare.1The Montana Quarterly. Witness Protection
In 2020, she worked with producer Zak Levitt and C13 Originals on Relative Unknown, a ten-episode podcast that told the family’s story in full for the first time. The series drew on Crouch’s 1,000-page prison autobiography, Hate and Discontent, and archival recordings of his testimony in jury trials and before a U.S. Senate committee.11Deadline. Relative Unknown: Hells Angels, Murder and Witness Protection Podcast From C13Originals The first episode launched on August 10, 2020, and within a year the podcast had been downloaded more than four million times.1The Montana Quarterly. Witness Protection