A Decade Later: A look back at the Twin Peaks Massacre in Waco, Texas
A district attorney’s overreaching decision doomed a criminal investigation that ended with no convictions
By Tommy Witherspoon KWTX May 16, 2025
https://www.kwtx.com/2025/05/16/decade-later-look-back-twin-peaks-massacre-waco-texas/
WACO, Texas (KWTX) – The implausible case more closely resembles a bizarre Quentin Tarantino screenplay than a real-life tragedy.
Ten years ago, about 200 bikers descended on the former Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco and a major battle broke out between rival biker groups, the Bandidos and Cossacks, and members of their respective support groups.
The deadly brawl only lasted about two minutes, but left nine bikers dead and 20 wounded.
With dozens of law enforcement officers surrounding the perimeter and police video cameras set up beforehand rolling, the frightening scene shattered the normally calm Sunday afternoon at the Waco Marketplace and sent families at a nearby restaurant and hundreds of bikers not involved in the melee scrambling for their lives.
But unlike quirky Tarantino movies in which justice normally is meted out to those who deserve it, former McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna’s overreaching decision to arrest everyone wearing biker colors associated with the Bandidos and Cossacks – even some who weren’t even on the Twin Peaks grounds when the firefight broke out – doomed the criminal cases from the start and led to no one being held criminally accountable for the nine deaths and multiple injuries after all the cases were dismissed.
Law enforcement officials arrested 177 bikers that afternoon – 15 more in subsequent days – on identical allegations despite the level of their reported involvement, or lack thereof, in the violent outbreak.
Hundreds languished in the McLennan County Jail for weeks and months on identical $1 million bonds, charged with engaging in organized criminal activity, before crusading attorneys filed a flurry of motions to get their bonds reduced and to challenge what they called the unconstitutional “cookie-cutter, fill-in-the-blanks” charging documents.
The “cookie-cutter, fill-in-the-blanks” charging documents defense lawyers described as unconstitutional.(KWTX GRAPHIC)
Only one of the 155 bikers indicted ever went to trial. Jacob Carrizal, president of the Dallas Bandidos chapter, was hand-selected by Reyna to stand trial first in what was expected to be a long series of biker jury trials.
A 54th State District Court jury in Waco deadlocked in November 2017 and a mistrial was declared in Carrizal’s case as Reyna and his prosecution team spent more time trying to demonize the Bandidos and other biker groups than proving Carrizal’s involvement in the melee.
“We had an open shootout in broad daylight at a public restaurant in the middle of May on a Sunday afternoon leaving nine dead and over 20 wounded and nobody was even convicted of a misdemeanor,” said colorful Houston attorney Paul Looney. “That is an unacceptable result in our American justice system
Looney and Dallas attorney Clint Broden spearheaded the ensuing outrage many felt for what they said was Reyna’s use of an overly broad brush to paint the bikers there that day as members of criminal street gangs and to charge them all as equal participants.
While the mass arrests flooded the county jail population and bogged down criminal court dockets, Looney recruited 28 lawyers from across the state to take on the bikers’ cases.
“I have never seen such an egregious activity so thoroughly and completely mishandled by the authorities in my entire career,” Looney said. “This is a complete disgrace to the entire system. They failed everybody through that endeavor, and had it not been for a bunch of defense lawyers who said this is a bunch of crap, who knows what they would have gotten away with. I am really proud of my colleagues.”
Reyna declined comment on the case, citing the pending civil litigation. He deferred comment to his attorney, Tom Brandt, who did not respond to a phone message from KWTX
.
After the Carrizal trial ended in mistrial, Reyna’s office systematically began dismissing cases, especially after Reyna, once thought to have a promising political career, was defeated in his bid for re-election by Barry Johnson. Johnson used the mishandling of the Twin Peaks cases as a hammer to bash Reyna, defeating the incumbent by 20 percentage points at the polls.
After Johnson took office, he reviewed what was left of the Twin Peaks criminal cases and ultimately dismissed the remaining two dozen or so cases in April 2019.
Ten years after the unprecedented events at Twin Peaks, more than 100 bikers, including about 35 who were not indicted, still have civil rights lawsuits pending in federal court. Dallas attorney Don Tittle represents the majority of bikers in the civil suits and said he has never been involved in cases that have dragged out in the courts for as long as these have.
The cases have bounced back and forth over the years from federal court to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as the lower-court rulings have been appealed by parties on both sides in what are known as interlocutory appeals.
In Tittle’s cases, the city of Waco, McLennan County and a number of law enforcement officers have been dismissed as defendants by pretrial rulings, leaving only Reyna and Waco police Detective Manual Chavez, who swore out the arrest affidavits, remaining as defendants.
Reyna and Chavez have claimed qualified immunity from liability, asserting they were merely doing their jobs.
However, Tittle has asserted that Reyna and Chavez are not entitled to immunity because he claims Reyna stepped beyond his role as prosecutor at the crime scene that day and Chavez committed perjury when he swore that what he was alleging in the identical arrest documents was true.
“It is stunning how long these cases have been pending,” Tittle said. “I have never had a case take this long, nothing close. But I’m not blaming the trial judge. Qualified immunity originally was meant to protect police officers who make split-second decisions in the line of duty from being sued. But this was not a split-second decision in the least. Rights were clearly violated.”
After the dust settled at Twin Peaks, officers bused hundreds of the bikers to the Waco Convention Center for processing while Waco police kicked off a homicide investigation led by 40-year police veteran J.R. Price. A number of bikers had been processed and released to go home when Reyna and his assistants arrived and made the call that anyone wearing Bandidos or Cossacks colors was going to jail on identical charges.
Broden, the Dallas attorney, called the decision a “rush to judgment” and a “comedy of errors.” He said it was wrong to charge those simply because of their mere presence at the crime scene, adding it was even worse to charge those who weren’t there but who arrived later.
“Unfortunately, as a result of the irresponsible and inept decisions to arrest and charge mostly everybody present, numerous people were falsely arrested and the true perpetrators were never able to be held accountable,” Broden said. “In the end, the Twin Peaks cases will always serve as an example as to how not to handle cases of this magnitude. Ten years later, the civil litigation arising out of the numerous civil rights violations committed in the wake of the Twin Peaks tragedy still remains ongoing with the officials behind the arrest refusing to accept any responsibility. It is our hope that justice for those falsely arrested a decade ago will ultimately prevail,” Broden said.
Trudy Smith, the mother of 27-year-old Matthew Mark Smith, says the pain of losing her son is just as pronounced 10 years later.
She said her son left behind two sons and had a wide variety of friends from all walks of life, including those who shared his love of riding motorcycles in a group he was associated with called the Scimitars, a support group of the Cossacks.
She and her husband were not aware that their only son was in Waco that day and learned of his death in a 2 p.m. phone call from a Cossacks member.
“It’s that call that every parent dreads,” she said. “My son was a preppy, but he also could fit in with his motorcycle friends. He had more friends than anyone I’ve ever seen. But the way this case was handled is a joke. I’m not kidding. I think it was a damn joke. People are supposed to have compassion for everybody. Everybody. But they tried to make everybody in those groups bad, like they were criminals, just because they rode motorcycles. That’s just not right.”
Forensic tests showed that two Waco police snipers killed four of the nine bikers that day. A grand jury found the officers committed no wrongdoing in 2016.
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