FRESNO — They called the funeral home incinerator here the “pizza oven.”
Days before a former Hells Angels Fresno chapter president is set to be sentenced for aiding the cremation of a man who was murdered by other club members, federal prosecutors have dropped a bombshell, alleging that a funeral director informed the FBI there were four such illegal cremations.
Federal authorities believe they know the identities of all four bodies, all former Hells Angels who are either listed as missing persons or murder victims, according to court records.
These new revelations came days before the sentencing of 54-year-old Merl Hefferman, a former president of the Fresno Hells Angels who has pleaded guilty to obstructing justice by arranging the cremation of Livermore resident Joel Silva. This was done after another Hells Angel, Brian Wendt, shot Silva in the back of the head inside the club’s Fresno headquarters, capping off a murder conspiracy that was hatched on the East Coast when Silva’s erratic behavior became too much for the biker gang to ignore, prosecutors say.
Federal prosecutors have named two of the others believed to have been cremated, an allegation prosecutors say is backed up by phone records as well as an FBI interview with the man who owned the funeral home where it all occurred. One of them, Robbie Huff, is a Hells Angels member last seen in the Fresno area in 2015, who allegedly aided the coverup of Silva’s 2014 murder by burning his pickup truck afterward.
The second man named by federal prosecutors, Arthur Carasis, is a longtime Contra Costa County resident and Hells Angels member. He was last seen in 2016, in Madera County, which borders on Fresno County, authorities say. The fourth missing man was identified in a defense sentencing memo as Juan Guevara, who went missing on Sept. 14, 2015, in Kern County. Authorities say he was last seen wearing a black shirt, blue denim jeans, black Adidas shoes, and a Hells Angels Motorcycle Club jacket.
Hefferman’s attorney vehemently denied that his client had anything to do with any clandestine cremations — save for the one he’s already pleaded guilty to — and called the prosecution’s allegations a last-ditch effort to secure a longer sentence with unproven rumors.
“The bottom line is if it is information not credible or sufficient to indict by way of grand jury, then it is not sufficiently reliable to consider for sentencing,” Hefferman’s attorney, James Bustamante, wrote in a sentencing memo. He said the prosecution failed to mention in their court filings that the funeral home owner also gave an FBI interview “wherein he denies illegal cremations no less than 77 times.”
But court records show that informants have been telling the FBI for years that there were other dead bodies that met the same fate as Silva. They allegedly referred to it as the “pizza oven,” a coded phrase that has shown up time and time again in court filings, unsealed FBI paperwork, and testimony in two trials that resulted in convictions against four people for involvement in Silva’s murder.
The lead prosecution witness, a former Richmond Hells Angel named Joseph Hardisty, told authorities that Wendt had also admitted to Hardisty “he had used the pizza oven for five or six bodies,” and that “the other murders were bikers from other clubs that (the Hells Angels) didn’t like,” authorities wrote in court filings.
Wendt, along with longtime Sonoma Hells Angels Jonathan Nelson and Russell Ott, were convicted last year of racketeering for playing different roles in Silva’s murder. Prosecutors allege that Nelson, the president of the Hells Angels Sonoma chapter, ordered the murder, that Ott helped lure Silva to Fresno, and that Wendt fired a shot into the back of Silva’s head when he bent down to inspect some marijuana inside the Fresno clubhouse.
Testifying at the trio’s 2022 trial, Hardisty admitted to helping plan the murder of Silva, one of his closest friends at the time. Hardisty said he did so by hosting a meeting at his Antioch home where the plan was hashed out. Afterward, he said Wendt told him the killing had gone as planned and that it was “one of his better murders,” according to court records. Wendt also told Hardisty that if he ever needed to use the crematorium to call a phone number and say he was “cooking pizza,” Hardisty told the FBI.
But details of other cremations were kept from the jury. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ruled repeatedly against prosecutors’ attempts to introduce evidence of other murders and suggestions that there were multiple body disposals. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Barry revisited the issue several times during trial and repeatedly argued the defense was “knocking on the door” to allow testimony of multiple bodies being illegally cremated in Fresno, by asking charged questions of certain witnesses, like the man who owned the funeral home.
But specific details were never brought in.
The director of the Fresno funeral home testified that Hefferman’s relative and two others showed up to his business in July 2014 and forcibly placed a body into the cremation oven after a legal cremation had already started.
But the director also claimed memory problems and a tendency to get “blackout drunk” during an FBI interview, Hefferman’s lawyer said in court papers. And Hardisty testified that he was told Silva was illegally cremated at a local pet cemetery, prompting the FBI to serve a search warrant at the location in 2017. It turned out not to be true.
But prosecutors say that phone records obtained by the FBI make up for the funeral home director’s inconsistent statements. The FBI found that Hefferman contacted the funeral home owner in July 2014, when Silva went missing, then again on Feb. 11, 2015, the same day Huff was last seen alive. There were no calls between the two in the interim, prosecutors say.
Similarly, phone records show “a cluster of calls” between Hefferman and the funeral home director on July 8, 2016, the day after Carasis was last seen. The director testified at a grand jury hearing that a fourth body was delivered to the home “wrapped in plastic and duct tape,” but that he couldn’t remember exactly when this took place, prosecutors said.
But the recently unsealed court records offer a never-before-seen glimpse into just how deep the federal investigation went. They say Hardisty, during an interview with the FBI, reported that Wendt had offered him a “green light” to use the “pizza oven” as he pleased. He said Wendt gave him a number to call and use the code phrase “cooking pizza” to get preparations started for an illicit cremation.
Hardisty wasn’t the only one to tell the FBI about the oven. Another informant claimed that he had heard talk of an “oven” and Wendt having killed two Hells Angels members, but didn’t offer more specific information, according to the records.
“It was planned and premeditated. In fact, it was the culmination of months of effort by Hefferman,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo, later adding, “Hefferman knew that the Hells Angels needed to destroy evidence of murders; he made efforts to address that need; and in Joel Silva’s case, he succeeded.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com