a deadly weapon. Hood and Jarman told police that the incident was merely an initiation hazing. Amidst claims by the Hells Angels' attorneys, Jack Berman and Herman Mintz, of insufficient evidence and an illegal search by arresting officers, all five defendants pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of unlawful imprisonment. Along with fellow Hells Angels members Sergey Walton, Donald Duane "Whitey" Smith, and "Oakland" Gary Popkin, Barger was charged with the May 21, 1972, murder of Servio Winston Agero — a drug dealer from McAllen, Texas, who had traveled to Oakland with a consignment of narcotics for sale – which allegedly occurred following a dispute over an $80,000 cocaine deal. A prosecution witness, Richard Ivaldi, testified that he witnessed Barger shoot Agero dead as he slept at the home of an absent acquaintance, and that Barger subsequently ordered the others to set fire to the residence. Barger and his three co-defendants were acquitted on December 29, 1972, following a seven-week trial after Ivaldi's credibility came under scrutiny. Barger was also provided with an alibi from his girlfriend, Sharon Gruhlke, who claimed she was in bed with him at the time of the murder. According to Barger's chief attorney James Crew, Ivaldi himself was involved in the conspiracy to kill Agero and, knowing he was a prime suspect and fearing retaliation from the "Texas Mafia", he tried to shift the blame to the Hells Angels. The killing of Agero was one of five possibly linked murders committed in the area around that time. Three men — drug dealers Kelly Patrick Smith, Willard Thomas and Gary Kemp, an acquaintance of Ivaldi — were found shot to death in a house near San Leandro the day after Agero's murder, and the body of a woman, Karen S. Long, was discovered in the trunk of a car in Oakland on May 26. An informant had led investigating detectives to the location of the automobile in which Long's corpse was found. John Joseph Devaney, Long's former husband, was found dead in a car in Hayward on June 14 in an apparent suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. On March 16, 1973, Barger was sentenced to a prison term of ten years-to-life after he was convicted of possession of narcotics for sale (37 grams of heroin), and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon. His future wife Sharon was a co-defendant; her case ended in a