Most Twin Peaks bikers off ankle monitors, few if any prosecutions likely

None of the 177 Twin Peaks bikers remain incarcerated in the county jail, even though all of them initially were assigned a $1 million bond, and of 135 required to wear ankle monitors, reported the Waco Tribune-Herald, all but 22 have been allowed to remove them "after agreements between their attorneys and state prosecutors to amend the conditions of their bonds." Grits thought these comments, representing one of the few informed views I've seen on the topic from anyone outside the DA's office, are likely prescient.

Houston attorney Paul Looney said two of his three clients, a married couple from Brenham, were not required to wear the ankle monitors and his third client had his removed in an agreement with prosecutors.

“I can only speculate, but my guess is that the ones that are still wearing the ankle bracelets present some type of specific flight risk, or, in the alternative, their lawyers are lazy and they just haven’t come in to visit with the prosecutor,” he said. “A lot of lawyers haven’t done that.”

Looney cautioned that there likely is no connection between levels of culpability and those still wearing ankle monitors.

“I have gone through the discovery, and right now I am of the opinion that they might not successfully prosecute anybody who is still alive. I think they may have a couple of dead people they may be able to convict, but the ones who committed the crimes are dead. Everybody else was defending themselves or other people,” Looney said.

If it's really true that no one alive can be prosecuted, history will judge the roundup of 177 bikers much differently than the DA and local officials are presently portraying.

Relatedly, GQ published the most extensive piece of investigative journalism yet on the Twin Peaks massacre, piecing together narratives from dozens of interviews. Give it a read.