Atlas page: /atlas/outlaws-mc

The Outlaws Motorcycle Club, formally the American Outlaws Association, is generally described as one of the oldest outlaw motorcycle clubs in the United States, tracing its origin to 1935 at a bar on Route 66 in McCook, Illinois, near Chicago. That founding predates the Hells Angels by more than a decade and predates the 1947 Hollister gathering that gave the wider one-percenter identity its name. The club's center emblem, a skull above crossed pistons known as "Charlie," took its modern form in the early 1950s. Its rivalry with the Hells Angels, captured in the backronym ADIOS ("Angels Die In Outlaw States"), is one of the defining conflicts in outlaw-club history. This page treats the Outlaws as social history and as an iconographic record, and separates what is documented from what is alleged or folkloric.

Who are the Outlaws Motorcycle Club?

The Outlaws Motorcycle Club, incorporated as the American Outlaws Association (AOA), is an outlaw motorcycle club founded in 1935 in McCook, Illinois. It is commonly cited as the oldest outlaw motorcycle club in the United States and, by member count, as the second-largest such club in the world after the Hells Angels. Reporting and the club's own materials describe a presence across dozens of countries. The U.S. Department of Justice and allied agencies classify it as one of the "big four" outlaw motorcycle gangs, a designation the club rejects. Its members are identified by the "Charlie" skull-and-crossed-pistons emblem worn on the back of a cut.

When were the Outlaws founded?

The Outlaws were founded in 1935 at Matilda's, a bar on Route 66 in McCook, Illinois, a suburb southwest of Chicago. The founding members were reportedly employees of the Electro-Motive Company. After relocating toward the South Side of Chicago, the group renamed itself the Chicago Outlaws around 1950. It incorporated as the American Outlaws Association on January 1, 1965. The 1935 date places the club's origin well before the Hells Angels (1948) and before the 1947 Hollister gathering that produced the modern one-percenter label, which is why the Outlaws are routinely called one of the oldest clubs of the type.

What does the Outlaws logo mean?

The Outlaws center emblem is "Charlie," a human skull set above two crossed pistons. The iconography evolved in stages. The earliest insignia was a hand-painted, head-on motorcycle inside a winged circle. Around 1950 a small skull replaced the motorcycle and the club adopted Old English lettering. By 1954 the crossed pistons were added beneath the skull, a change commonly linked in club lore to the imagery of the 1953 film The Wild One. In 1959 the design was redrawn larger and with more detail, and it later became a registered trademark. The skull reads as a fatalistic outlaw identity and the crossed pistons as the machine itself; together they function as the club's signature, reserved for full members.

What does ADIOS mean for the Outlaws?

ADIOS is a backronym used by Outlaws members standing for "Angels Die In Outlaw States," a reference to the club's long and violent rivalry with the Hells Angels. It is one of several mottoes in circulation, alongside GFOD ("God Forgives, Outlaws Don't"), OFFO ("Outlaws Forever, Forever Outlaws"), and the more explicitly hostile AHAMD ("All Hells Angels Must Die"). These slogans appear on patches and, for eligible members, as tattoos. They are expressions of club identity and of the rivalry; the violent ones should be read as the rhetoric of a conflict, not as a literal program attributable to any individual.

History

Origins in McCook, 1935

The standard account, consistent across journalism and the club's own published history, places the founding in 1935 at Matilda's bar on Route 66 in McCook, Illinois, among workers from the Electro-Motive Company. This was a riding and social club in its earliest form, predating the post-war surge that produced most of the clubs now grouped under the one-percenter banner. The 1935 origin is the single most-cited fact about the Outlaws and is treated here as VERIFIED, with the caveat that founding-era detail for any club of this period rests partly on club tradition rather than contemporaneous records.

From McCook to Chicago to a national association

Around 1950 the club relocated and rebranded as the Chicago Outlaws, adopting the skull insignia and Old English lettering that signaled a harder identity. The crossed pistons followed in 1954, completing the "Charlie" emblem. The club incorporated as the American Outlaws Association on January 1, 1965, the legal name under which it still operates. In 1963 the Outlaws are reported to have been the first club east of the Mississippi River to adopt the diamond-shaped "1%er" mark, situating them early in the spread of that identity from its West Coast origins.

The conflict with the Hells Angels

The Outlaws-Hells Angels rivalry is among the most documented conflicts in outlaw-club history and is the context for the ADIOS and AHAMD slogans. Reporting traces a major escalation to the spring of 1974, when three Hells Angels were killed in Florida in an episode widely understood as retaliation in a cycle of reciprocal violence between the clubs. The Hells Angels are reported to have treated the matter as open war thereafter. Over the following decades both clubs sustained heavy losses across multiple states and countries. The honest framing is that this was a sustained inter-club war with many participants and many narratives; specific acts are matters for the court record, and this page does not assign individual guilt.

International expansion

The Outlaws grew from a Chicago club into an international association, frequently by "patching over" existing clubs, meaning absorbing them and converting their members. Reported milestones include Canada in 1977 (through Satan's Choice chapters), France in 1993, Australia in 1994, Norway in 1995, and a chapter in Okinawa, Japan in 2006. Current reporting and club materials describe several hundred chapters across more than forty countries and a membership in the thousands, placing the Outlaws second in size among outlaw clubs worldwide. As the club crossed borders, its emblem, its mottoes, and its earned-tattoo logic traveled with it.

Allegations and the law

The U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, and Europol have characterized the Outlaws as an organized criminal enterprise, and individual members and chapters have been prosecuted under racketeering and related statutes over many years. These are allegations and convictions tied to specific people and specific cases; they are attributed here to the relevant courts and agencies and are not generalized to every member. The club's own position, stated publicly on its materials, is that the criminal-enterprise label is unjust and that it is a club of motorcycle enthusiasts. Both positions belong in the record.

The Patch and Tattoo System (Tiered)

The cardinal rule of outlaw-club body marking applies to the Outlaws as to the wider tradition: club imagery is earned, not bought, and access is gated by standing within the club. The list below separates what is documented from what is contested or folkloric. For the full framing of how the tradition works, see the parent canon on outlaw-biker tattoo culture.

VERIFIED (documented in reliable sources)

  • Colors versus tattoos. The "colors" are the three-piece patch on the cut: a top rocker for the club name, the "Charlie" center patch, and a bottom rocker for territory. The colors are club property and are tightly regulated. Tattoos are the permanent, body-borne counterpart, governed by similar rules of access but living on the member rather than on a garment. This distinction organizes the whole system.
  • The "Charlie" emblem as a controlled mark. The skull-and-crossed-pistons design is the club's center patch and a registered trademark, reserved for full members and not for outsiders.
  • Earned-progression gating. By the club's published convention, an Outlaw becomes eligible to wear a tattoo of the club emblem and mottoes such as GFOD only after one year of full membership, and may have a replica of the full colors tattooed on the back only after roughly five years. These timelines are among the most specific and consistently reported conventions in the tradition.
  • Slogan marks. GFOD ("God Forgives, Outlaws Don't"), adopted as a motto around 1969, along with OFFO, ADIOS, and AHAMD, are attested club mottoes that circulate as patches and tattoos.

MIXED (real mark, contested or non-uniform meaning)

  • "Lightning bolts" / SS-style runes. Law-enforcement sources report that a tattoo of double lightning bolts, drawn in the style of the Nazi SS sig runes, is worn by members alleged to have killed or attempted to kill on the club's behalf. This is the Outlaws' analogue to the contested Hells Angels "Filthy Few" mark, and it carries the same caution: the violent meaning originates largely in law-enforcement intelligence and prosecution narratives and should not be stated as established fact. The presence of SS-style imagery in outlaw-club iconography is real and is documented across the wider tradition; the specific kill-credential reading is an attributed allegation, not a verified meaning.
  • "LL" / "Lounge Lizard." Reported as a tattoo marking a member who has served a prison sentence. The mark appears in law-enforcement compendia and secondary reporting; its prevalence and uniformity across chapters are not well documented, so it sits in the MIXED tier.

CONTESTED / FOLKLORE (circulated widely, not reliably sourceable as fixed meaning)

  • Universal "decoder ring" meanings. Commercial blogs and forums assign fixed meanings to colors, numbers, and minor marks across all clubs at once. Meanings in this world are local, club-specific, and era-specific, and are often deliberately kept private. Any source offering a single universal key is unreliable by definition.
  • Lurid "earned" catalogs. The broader outlaw-biker tradition is a magnet for sensational claims about marks supposedly awarded for specific sexual or violent acts. As documented in the parent canon, these catalogs circulate because they are lurid, not because they are sourced, and they contradict one another club to club. They are noted here only to be set aside.

Significance

The Outlaws matter to tattoo history for two reasons beyond their age. First, their published one-year and five-year eligibility convention is one of the clearest documented examples of the tradition's defining logic: that a tattoo can be a credential issued and policed by a group rather than a personal choice. Second, the club's reach, from a 1935 Chicago-area bar to charters on several continents, shows how a body-marking system travels: the "Charlie" emblem, the mottoes, and the earned-tattoo rules moved together as the club expanded, carrying a self-contained visual economy across borders. The Outlaws sit alongside the Hells Angels and the Pagans as one of the clubs whose iconography defined what the outlaw-biker tattoo tradition looks like.

Cultural Context and Sensitivity Note

This is contested and sometimes dangerous territory, and it is written here as careful social history rather than as true-crime spectacle, glamorization, or a guide to identifying anyone. Three cautions govern the page. First, criminal allegations attached to the club and to specific marks, above all the lightning-bolt runes, are presented as allegations sourced to courts, the Department of Justice, and journalism; nothing here asserts that any individual committed a crime. Second, the SS-style and Nazi-derived imagery in the tradition is real and is not sanitized into mere rebellion, but neither is it universalized to every member. Third, the bulk of sensational "meaning" claims about minor marks are folklore that circulates because it is lurid; the honest position is to name the documented spine, flag the disputes, and refuse the myth.

Cross-References

Atlas entries

Atlas entries

  • Outlaw Biker (1%er) Tattoo Culture (Atlas source entry)
  • Hells Angels Filthy Few Symbol (Atlas source entry)

Sources

  1. Outlaws Motorcycle Club. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaws_Motorcycle_Club (1935 McCook founding, Electro-Motive workers, Matilda's on Route 66, Chicago Outlaws renaming c. 1950, AOA incorporation January 1 1965, "Charlie" logo evolution 1950/1954/1959, 1963 adoption of the 1%er diamond east of the Mississippi, GFOD/ADIOS/AHAMD/OFFO mottoes, 1974 Florida escalation with the Hells Angels, international expansion dates, chapter and membership scale, one-year and five-year tattoo eligibility, lightning-bolt and "Lounge Lizard" marks, DOJ/CISC/Europol classification and the club's denial).
  2. Outlaw motorcycle club. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw_motorcycle_club (one-percenter identity, the diamond patch, the "big four" classification).
  3. Outlaws MC World (official club history). http://www.outlawsmcworld.com/history.htm (the club's own published account of its origin and emblem; used as a primary self-description, not as an independent authority).
  4. Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs: Aspects of the One-Percenter Culture for Emergency Department Personnel to Consider. Western Journal of Emergency Medicine. PMC4100862. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4100862/ (academic-adjacent summary of patch and tattoo conventions across clubs).
  5. Los Angeles County intelligence report on outlaw motorcycle gangs. https://info.publicintelligence.net/LA-OutlawBikers.pdf (law-enforcement documentation of patches and coded marks across clubs).
  6. Barker, Thomas. Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs as Organized Crime Groups. Springer, 2014 (academic treatment of club structure and the organized-crime framing).
  7. Tattoo History Atlas canon: Outlaw Biker (1%er) Tattoo Culture (internal parent document consolidating the documented-record entry and the tiered VERIFIED / MIXED / FOLKLORE framing relied on here).

Editorial

Researched and written by John J. Mayo III, Editor, Tattoo History Atlas. This page reflects current canon as of the Last reviewed date above and is refreshed on a quarterly cycle. It builds on the Atlas canon for outlaw-biker tattoo culture and does not contradict it; where this page extends the record (incorporation date, logo-evolution stages, international milestones, the lightning-bolt and Lounge Lizard marks), those extensions are sourced above.

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