After 16 years on the run from the law, former Outlaws Motorcycle Club South Side Chicago chapter president Orville (The Anvil) Cochran was finally caught by authorities this week when he was arrested for shoplifting a back brace from a Windy City Meijer superstore in Evergreen Park. The 67-year old Cochran had been a fugitive since the summer of 2001 after fleeing a racketeering, drug and murder indictment out of Milwaukee and is a suspect in at least three gangland slayings. If convicted of the charges pending against him, the man some in club circles call “O.G. Orvie,” faces life imprisonment. He’s being held without bail in Chicago’s Metro Detention Center awaiting extradition to the Cheese State. The year before he was indicted, Cochran survived an assassination attempt in front of the Outlaws’ South Side Chicago clubhouse. Back in the 1990s, he fought on the frontlines of the Outlaws’ war with the Hells Angels in Illinois, Wisconsin and beyond. One of the murders Cochran is believed to have played a part in occurred in New York. Beginning in the 1970s, the Midwest-based Outlaws have tried blocking the West Coast-headquartered Hells Angels from making inroads moving east at every turn. Chicago, the birthplace of the Outlaws original charter, has been a key battle ground in the epic biker war, active since 1974. The ill will between the two clubs spiked in the mid-1990s, resulting in a series of bombings and executions. According to court records and ATF files, Cochran led an Outlaws firebombing campaign against the Hells Angels and their affiliate club in Illinois, the Hell’s Henchmen, as well as participated in the murder conspiracies related to the killings of rival bikers Michael (Mad Mike) Quale, Jack (4-by-4) Castle and Thomas (Westside Tommy) Stimac. Quale and Castle were Hells Angels. Stimac was a one-time powerful Outlaws chapter president in Chicago who had fallen out of favor with club administrators. The Quale homicide, which took place in a melee at a New York racetrack, and the Castle hit, are both charged in Cochran’s current case. Orville Cochran Prior to going on the run in June 2001, Cochran was employed by the then-notoriously mobbed up McCormick Place convention center on the shores of Lake Michigan in downtown Chicago, the largest such venue in all of North America. The Chicago Outlaws has long had a working relationship with the local Italian mafia. Mad Mike Quale, the 44-year old president of the Hells Angels’ Rochester, New York chapter was stabbed to death in a massive violent fracas between the Hells Angels and Outlaws at the Lancaster Speedway near Buffalo on the afternoon of September 25, 1994. In the same fight, Outlaws’ Western New York chapter president Walter (Buffalo Wally) Posnjak was shot to death. Jack 4-by-4 Castle had recently patched over from the Hell’s Henchmen to the Hells Angels when he was killed on the morning of March 3, 1995 in Schiller Park on Chicago’s Northwest side. Castle was shot behind the wheel of his car outside a trucking company he was employed at while eating a donut and drinking a cup of coffee. In the years after Castle, 39, was slain, the Chicago Outlaws’ former South Side chapter president Carl (Jamming Jay) Warneke became a witness for the government and admitted to stewarding the Castle murder conspiracy to fruition. Westside Tommy Stimac was gunned down on the back porch of his Lemont Township, Illinois home on the evening of July 27, 1999. The 47-year old Stimac is credited for cementing the Outlaws’ ties to the Chicago mafia in the 1970s. He did nine years (1982-1991) in federal prison for heading a prostitution ring and aiding in the kidnapping of a slain North Carolina drug dealer’s girlfriend. At the time of his death, he owned a business that helped truckers secure equipment for their trips hauling cargo cross-country.
